Ward is the second work in the Parahumans series, and reading Worm first is strongly recommended.  A lot of this won’t make sense otherwise and if you do find yourself a fan of the universe, the spoilers in Ward will affect the reading of the other work.

Ward is not recommended for young or sensitive readers.

The Glow-worm chapters were a teaser event leading up to Worm 2.  They aren’t required reading but offer flavor and additional angles by which to view certain characters.  They take the form of forum posts, chat conversations and emails.

They’re best described as a kind of a post-epilogue, pseudo-prologue bridge between the series.  Those who read them on the Worm site shouldn’t feel the need to read them again – they’re included here for convenience’s sake, with a few readability improvements.

If you’re not interested or find this hard to read, click here to jump to chapter 1.

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♦  Topic:  We’re Back Online
In:  Boards ► Parahumans Online
Hope_In_Pithos (Admin)
Posted on August 15th, Y1:

To call the efforts of everyone involved heroic would be grossly understating things. This IT project required the efforts of seventy eight PHO staff members, employees of Stateside Online, former officials of the US government, former members of the United States space program, members of international space programs, the Guild (Masamune in particular), and numerous independent experts and volunteers. At a time when we’re all stretched thin and there is an incredible amount of work still to be done, seven hundred and eight individuals devoted spare time and valuable resources to get us and six other partners online.

Things will be clunky and frustrating.  For most, with congestion being what it is, things will be slow enough that people can get a cup of coffee and come back to find the page hasn’t fully loaded.  We’ve stripped away a bit of the polish and the gloss: the header images, badge graphics and the ability to include video or images are gone for now, to keep things simple and easy.  We will be moderating very carefully to ensure nobody disrupts anyone’s ability to access the site.  It will be painful.  Help each other, be patient, and contribute the best you can.

In so many ways, things will be frustrating, slow, and painful.  Care, helpfulness, patience, and contribution will make literal worlds of difference.  In so many ways.

But we’re back.  Stay tuned for bigger, better things.  Bear with us as we sort through it all.

(Showing Page 34 of 34)

►  I♥Lethe
Replied on August 16th, Y1:
@ Dgators – Generally, you want to be careful because you won’t get any updates to OS360 or other PC OSes, no patches to your phone.  There is no tech support and there is little recourse for anyone hit with malware. Plausibly there’s a lot of desperate people out there who see that the defenses are down and we’re in early days.  It’s probably easier for someone to come up with new means of attack than it is for anyone to roll out a proper patch.  Presumably if they wanted to infect systems or get access they would want to do it now when it would probably let them get access to things that follow.

►  KillDestroyKiss (Library)
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
Library project is moving ahead! Plenty of people brought laptops and phones and we’re piecing things together by loading from cache.  It is more zombie net than real net but we’re finding things. There are more coming but people want to delete their search histories before they hand their computers over. Because porn.

Downside is now a lot more people know about the net access at the library. Hours-long wait times Q.Q

►  Point_Me_@_The_Sky
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
I have access through the portal at the east of the city.  When I go through I’ve been doing loops through the old neighborhoods to see what I can scrounge up.  If you need something to fill major gaps I can try looking.  If not, I’m going to see if I can round off my collection.  Would be nice to have a good excuse if I get accused of smuggling or looting tho

►  boaty5
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
what collection?

►  Point_Me_@_The_Sky
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
Any/all of: Masque/Costumes Under Clothes/Heroine/Shine On

►  boaty5
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
fuck that. I regret asking. screw the capes. screw everything about celebrating the capes. they. failed. us.
Site administrators discussed this post.  We’re leaving up the first half as we feel it is important for people to process and address these feelings and sentiments.  We’ve removed the second half (personal insults) and delivered one infraction.

►  Point_Me_@_The_Sky
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
[Edit: removed this myself- I decided I don’t really want to get into this]

►  boaty5
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
just because I’m on a site about capes doesn’t mean I like them.  it means I recognize how important they are to what happened and what happens next

►  KillDestroyKiss (Library)
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
Hm!  @ Point_Me_@_The_Sky – We’re looking to get everything we can recorded digitally.  Would you be okay with letting us scan your collection?  You’re in the city?

►  Point_Me_@_The_Sky
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
100%.  I can bring it to your library.  PM me with location & times good for you.  Information is too important

End of Page.   1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … 32, 33, 34

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♦  Topic:  [Headline] Refugees Barred Access
In:  Boards ► World News ► Main
Boo-chan
Posted on August 17th, Y1:

[Transcribed from print]  Conrad James Freed and his family could tell a harrowing tale of their trip across Earth Bet’s America.  They have finally reached the Northeastern Bet-Gimel portal, hearing rumor of wait times, only to be told there is a possibility they may not be allowed in at all.

They had been driving, hitchhiking and hiking for four months.

“They aren’t giving us answers,” he told Bulletin News on Saturday.

Their family had been trying to subsist on their rural property in Wisconsin when the weather took a turn for the worse.  Though it was June, Conrad says he saw snow falling on the fields where he had planted the first crop of the season.

Two days later, there would be a knock at his door.  Authorities had flown over and saw the lights of his house.  They warned him the snowfall and the groundwater was contaminated.  It would be the last straw, as the unseasonably cold weather had cut into the already thin initial harvest.

Conrad says the authorities wanted him and his family to leave right away.  “They didn’t give us a chance to pack.  One of the men even grabbed my daughter.  He bruised her wrist, he held her so hard.  I promised I would cooperate if he would only give us five minutes.  I was in shock.”

He and his wife decided to make the harrowing trip to the nearest portal without the assistance of authorities, a decision he says he made on the spur of the moment, after the manhandling of his daughter and the manner in which he was forced from his home.  “I came to regret that decision.”

Conrad’s story is far from unique.  Evacuation is still underway even two years and two months after Gold Morning.  Where things took a turn for the worse for Conrad and his family, and where an undisclosed change in policy may affect uncountable refugees from Earth Bet, is that the border agents have apparently ceased processing refugees. 

Tensions are rising and as the number of people in the refugee settlement slowly climbs and resources are stretched thinner, people are speaking out.  Conrad says, “We know there is more than enough space on the other side.  We see people coming and going but they won’t let us through or even meet us to answer our questions.  We’re willing to settle outside of the city.  I know agriculture and I know they desperately need farmers.  Even if they give us a minimum of supplies and tools, it has to be better than this.”

Bulletin News reached out to authorities and received no response.

–Thoughts?  Anyone know what was up?

(Showing Page 19 of 20)

►  K.G. Ray (City: West Point)
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
They’re letting people through again now, and they’re letting a lot through.  Speculation might have been right. Article might have been more about political pressure than anything else.

►  Geronimo
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
Official word is that they wanted to pause and get organized so they could double the number of people coming through. Doesn’t make a lot of sense when it comes to their silence until now.

►  Nakyak (Cape Geek)
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
lots of capes stationed at the portal.
some thinkers like Squint and Danger Zone are there.
pretty sure if you watch how they rotate in and out there will always be one thinker on duty.
screening refugees?

►  Point_Me_@_The_Sky
Replied on August 17th, Y1:
@ Nakyak – could be.  Could be that it means less need for pain in the ass background checks with internet running at 33K.  Danger Zone sees likelihood a person commits violence to each and every person around them, recency, flavor of violence.  Squint sees contraband, possible other hazards.  Skip background check, move people along.

► Boosher
Replied on August 17th, Y1
Speaking of security, there was another thread where someone said something about rock & a hard place?  It’s apparently being talked about a lot among the refugees.

► Nutty
Replied on August 17th, Y1
@ Boosher – This article, search for Nancy Y’s statement.  People traveling across the US to get to portals are being warned about multiple threats.  Word on the capevine is that with everyone having pulled out, all former quarantine zones are breached.  In the US and elsewhere.  Nilbog is the one everyone knows about.  He’s in custody, his children aren’t.  If you’re paying attention to hero groups and their movements, they’re making lots of trips out.  They’re tired and people say they’re aloof.
I say they’re fighting a hard fight and they’re keeping their distance from public and media because they don’t want us to know it.

► boaty5
Replied on August 17th, Y1
they don’t want to tell us a lot of things.  what even happened?  the world ended and nobody is willing to explain.

► Point_Me_@_The_Sky
Replied on August 17th, Y1
@ Boosher – a big part of what was being talked about in other similar articles was the threat of bandits, bad weather, the wasteland and chasms, unstoppable robot armies, the food shortages.  Edit: Nutty beat me to it.  Slow internet sucks.  I think boaty is a good example of why they’re aloof.  People want to assign blame.  Assign the blame to the man who did this.  In times of crisis, look to the people who are helping.  Support them or try to be one of them.

► ✘ [Post removed & user infracted]

► Deepwell5
Replied on August 17th, Y1
I agree for the most part, Point@, but it’s more complicated than that.  I gotta side with boaty.  We made a covenant with the capes.  We put up with a lot.  In exchange, they were supposed to protect us.  It’s pretty clear they didn’t.  Maybe it was impossible.  That’s fine.  But let’s not ignore that they broke their end of the contract.  Let’s not ignore that the PRT is gone, we no longer have non-capes in charge of them, and they have more proportional power than ever.  Let’s not ignore that they’re making a new PRT without any of the key rules that defined the last one.  Less communication, no oversight.

I’m scared.  You should be too.

► DonJon
Replied on August 17th, Y1
Amen

End of Page.   1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … 18, 19, 20

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♦  Private Messages from Glitzglam:

Glitzglam:  u cant engage with them.  u gotta let it lie.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky:  I’m worried what happens if the wrong ideas get traction.
Glitzglam:  So am I.  Im more worried about u.  Thought u might need pep talk.
Glitzglam:  Have u got that email yet?
Glitzglam:  ? ? ?
Point_Me_@_The_Sky:  If this is a pep talk it isn’t a very good one.
Glitzglam:  Thats a no huh?  fuck
Glitzglam:  u right though
Glitzglam:  I hate typing on phone.  Ice cream or coffee.  I pep talk u in person.  When u can fit it into cray schedule
Point_Me_@_The_Sky:  You’re a beautiful person.  Yes.  Sounds nice.  Soon
Glitzglam:  We can talk about how gang is getting together for big shebang and what a disaster it will be.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky:  you’re doing the terrible pep talk thing again. :0
Glitzglam *New Message*:  😮

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♦ Topic: Info & Update
In: Boards ► Teams ► Reach (Private)
Moonsong
Posted on August 18th, Y1:

PHO is back on and they are letting the chats run. That’s where we usually meet, but I’ve been warned it’s choppy and slow. I’ll be there.

This took me three hours to just get started with. It’s hard.

It is with the heaviest of hearts that I inform you that Coiffure did pass. When Gold Morning arrived, we suspected something might have happened, given the reports. She was killed in one of the initial strikes on the East coast. She was a friend, a teammate, and she was a true hero. She elevated others around her to be better people by the standards she lived by.

Coiffure is survived by only her father. Her mother was one of my favorite adults. She was kind, she was cool, and she was a genuinely good mom to Coiffure. When we went back to school in the fall, she gave us really cool back to school supplies. It remains in my memory as one of the most randomly nice things a relative stranger has done for me.

You’ll also remember her siblings Arthur and Cal, though you might not remember their names. When the family came by, Arthur would be the one curled up in the big chair near the front desk, with one of his game things. Cal would be watching over his big brother’s shoulder. I always thought it was hilarious how uninterested they were in capes.

We can expect they all died instantaneously. I’ve talked to Coiffure’s father. I would suggest that if you happen to run into him, leave him be. He doesn’t want reminders.

Furcate decided to fight on that monumental day and that says so much when not everyone was brave enough to do that. Furcate was wild and tortured and beautiful. They were a handful and yet they rewarded us with ten positive things for every negative we had to overcome. I’d like to think they got something out of putting up with us in much the same way.

I want what I say here to be honest. I did not get along with Furcate the vast majority of the time. Furcate did not get along with me. I still respected them immensely. They said one word for every thousand the rest of us said and yet they could convey so much in their actions. I keep saying those things, using math like ‘ten times over’, but it’s so very Furcate. They overflowed, they swelled. The cup runneth over. I look back and I’m dazed by how much of a place they found in my heart and my thoughts.

It might be crass to say, but I don’t know if anyone’s going to have words for them. Scritch and Scratch were the closest thing we had to a nemesis. They had their scummy moments. They also kept to the rules. They were killed during one of the lulls in the fighting, by a group I won’t name.

The fates of Tribute, Boundless, Capricorn and Steamwheel are yet unknown. I hope you guys are okay.

I’m alive, obviously. Figurehead is alive but you all should know his issues with being controlled. The events really shook him. He’s retired in large part, he’ll be doing something capey, but he’s said he isn’t coming on PHO. He asked me to wish you all the best.

(Showing Page 1 of 1)

No Replies.

End of Page 1.

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Connecting to “pChat.ParahumansOnline.TeamReach(6667)” (Attempt 90)
Resolving Host Name
Connecting…
Connected.
Using identity “Cap”
Welcome to Team Reach Private Chat. Forum thread.
[Click here to see messages older than 3 days.]

[Old Message: A16 22:24] Moonsong has joined the chat.
[Old Message: A16 22:53] Moonsong has changed the chat topic: Welcome to Team Reach Private Chat. List of Alive & Dead.
[Old Message: A16 23:20] Moonsong: Post made in the forum. I only mentioned the team members. See topic links for the staff members and others I know about.
[Old Message: A17 1:03] Moonsong: I’ve edited the post to add Scritch and Scratch.
[Old Message: A17 4:15] Moonsong has left the chat.
[Old Message: A17 10:15] Moonsong has joined the chat.
[Old Message: A18 2:01] Moonsong has left the chat.
[Old Message: A18 9:50] Moonsong has joined the chat.

[A18 11:04:20] Cap has joined the chat.
[A18 11:04:25] Cap: hey

[A18 11:06:43] Moonsong: Hi Tristan

[A18 11:06:55] Cap: haha. every time.
[A18 11:07:07] Cap: The universe has a dark sense of humor, it seems.

[A18 11:07:09] Moonsong: I’m glad you’re alive, Tristan
[A18 11:07:12] Moonsong: I suppose it does.

[A18 11:07:30] Cap: i’m glad you’re alive too
[A18 11:07:34] Cap: believe it or not

[A18 11:08:11] Moonsong: Were you there?

[A18 11:08:44] Cap: was dragged into it. glad I was though.

[A18 11:09:01] Moonsong: *nods*
[A18 11:09:01] Moonsong: How is your brother?

[A18 11:09:16] Cap: doing well as can be expected

[A18 11:11:47] Moonsong: And your family? Your parents? I liked them when I saw them.

[A18 11:12:00] Cap: alive. we’re in the city. they’re trying to come to terms with things
[A18 11:12:35] Cap: things are really coming together like crazy. new skyscrapers every day, new stores. good and almost like a city in Earth Bet but it isn’t really home

[A18 11:15:08] Moonsong: It isn’t. We’re in the city too.

[A18 11:16:17] Cap: You and your folks? they’reokay?

[A18 11:17:40] Moonsong: They’re good. Dad is taking a shot at mayor or councilman. We’ll see what happens.

[A18 11:17:59] Cap: good for him. thriving?

[A18 11:22:55] Moonsong: nobody is thriving these days. but he’s in his element

[A18 11:23:24] Cap: some are thriving. we’re all playing nice. truce in full effect. masterminds and chessmasters are having a ball out there. guarantee it

[A18 11:25:31] Moonsong: I suppose we’ll see.

[A18 11:28:40] Cap: I read your post, btw
[A18 11:28:42] Cap: good words
[A18 11:28:45] Cap: kudos

[A18 11:28:50] Moonsong: Thank you.

[A18 11:29:27] Cap: I’m surprised you’re here though
[A18 11:29:35] Cap: is Reach still a thing?

[A18 11:29:56] Moonsong: I consider the others friends and teammates.
[A18 11:30:11] Moonsong: I consider myself a member of Reach

[A18 11:30:33] Cap: I get that
[A18 11:30:35] Cap: doesn’t answer my question
[A18 11:30:40] Cap: will it carry on? what happens?

[A18 11:43:50] Moonsong: It won’t. I don’t think so anyway. There’s a lot of hero teams out there and its hard for a sponsored team to get traction even without people feeling betrayed.

[A18 11:44:02] Cap: yeah

[A18 11:46:14] Moonsong: A lot of teams are gathering under the Wardens. PRT-like. They’re walking a fine line between emulating PRT and being PRT. Lots of teams under the umbrella. I’m not sure it’s working. I don’t know if I want to get on board with that. I don’t know if the others would.

[A18 11:46:23] Cap: that’s fair

[A18 11:47:50] Moonsong: I will always be a member of Reach. Even if the team has dissolved.

[A18 11:48:42] Cap: I like that
[A18 11:48:53] Cap: since when were you so good with words?

[A18 11:50:37] Moonsong: Since when did you pay attention to anyone but yourself?

[A18 11:50:43] Cap: …

[A18 11:51:12] Moonsong: ?

[A18 11:52:36] Cap: 45 minutes of something approaching civility has to be a record for us

[A18 11:52:57] Moonsong: I see. Yes. It could be.

[A18 11:53:06] Cap: I would have liked to keep that streak going
[A18 11:53:20] Cap: oh well

[A18 11:54:31] Moonsong: Are you well, Tristan?

[A18 11:55:21] Cap: I see we’re going straight to the barbs

[A18 11:56:32] Moonsong: No barbs. I genuinely want to know.

[A18 11:57:14] Cap: how uncharacteristicaly nice of you

[A18 11:58:23] Moonsong: Do I need to worry about you?

[A18 11:58:45] Cap: no
[A18 11:58:56] Cap: you “helped” more than enough

[A18 12:00:19] Moonsong: I don’t know.

[A18 12:01:08] Cap: don’t you?

[A18 12:02:07] Moonsong: I’ve spent a lot of time hoping you died.

[A18 12:03:34] Cap: WOW
[A18 12:03:58] Cap: geez

[A18 12:04:06] Moonsong: *shrug*

[A18 12:05:27] Cap: geez. there is no humanity in there at all is there?
[A18 12:05:51] Cap: just takes the world to end beforeI get a glimpse of the real you

[A18 12:06:45] Moonsong: Lets not pretend, Tristan.

[A18 12:07:01] Cap: pretend what?
[A18 12:07:42] Cap: you decided you hated me before you ever got to know me
[A18 12:08:37] Cap: you’re really your fathers daughter. two-faced. anyone reading between the lines can see what you really thought about furcate

[A18 12:10:39] Moonsong: I meant what I wrote.

[A18 12:11:47] Cap: a thinly veiled outline of furcates many problems
[A18 12:11:56] Cap: you couldn’t resist saying you didn’t like them

[A18 12:11:23] Moonsong: Are you done?

[A18 12:12:13] Cap: you made furcate more miserable than anyone

[A18 12:12:26] Moonsong: Apparently not

[A18 12:12:29] Cap: you never once tried to understand them just like you never once tried to understand me
[A18 12:13:12] Cap: you had your notions of how everyone was supposed to behave
[A18 12:13:36] Cap: how everyone was supposed to be
[A18 12:13:45] Cap: you know what they call people who come to judgment about people before they have the facts?
[A18 12:14:19] Cap: the label applies, moonsong
[A18 12:14:29] Cap: you wedged yourself into a situation you didn’t understand and you made it so much worse
[A18 12:14:48] Cap: what guts me is you think you were right to do it.

[A18 12:16:39] Moonsong: I didn’t like furcate. I did love and respect him as a teammate.
[A18 12:16:51] Moonsong: I damn well held him at the end. For a long time. I talked to him the entire time.
[A18 12:18:23] Moonsong: Motherfucker.
[A18 12:18:41] Moonsong: I’m crying now.
[A18 12:19:04] Moonsong: And no. I don’t know if I was right, Tristan.

[A18 12:20:08] Cap: moonsong admitting she might be wrong? Did the world end or something?

[A18 12:21:12] Moonsong: Go fuck yourself, Tristan. That wound is too fresh.

[A18 12:22:13] Cap: …
[A18 12:22:24] Cap: yeah
[A18 12:22:29] Cap: I’ll own up to that

[A18 12:23:43] Moonsong: You’re admitting you’re wrong? What happened to you in these past few years?

[A18 12:23:50] Cap: not enough. not nearly enough.

[A18 12:24:48] Moonsong: Guess not. What a shame.

[A18 12:25:23] Cap: that wound is fresh in its own way
[A18 12:25:56] Cap: just so you know

[A18 12:26:54] Moonsong: Alright.

[A18 12:27:45] Cap: fuck
[A18 12:28:20] Cap: this is a mess. we should keep our distance

[A18 12:29:17] Moonsong: Do I need to come after you?

[A18 12:30:38] Cap: no
[A18 12:30:57] Cap: fuck you. no
[A18 12:31:40] Cap: what the fuck was that about not thinking you were right?
[A18 12:31:48] Cap: don’t answer that. do me a favor and shut up for a second.
[A18 12:32:00] Cap: ====——====——====——====——====
[A18 12:32:24] Cap: members of reach – don’t scroll up past this line
[A18 12:32:37] Cap: its just moonsong and i being shitty at each other
[A18 12:33:23] Cap: if you joined the team after I left you probably won’t get it
[A18 12:34:44] Cap: Furcate –azúcar- you were one of my favorite
[A18 12:35:17] Cap: those days were some of my best and some of my worst
[A18 12:36:11] Cap: you were some of the best parts of the best days
[A18 12:38:21] Cap: Coif– after everything that happened I thought I might not want to be a hero anymore
[A18 12:39:50] Cap: your example is the only reason I still want to
[A18 12:39:55] Cap: you were one of the good few
[A18 12:40:44] Cap: to the rest who aren’t here— be well
[A18 12:41:09] Cap: …
[A18 12:41:41] Cap: I’m better at saying stuff in person.

[A18 12:42:12] Moonsong: I’ll let the others know you said it.

[A18 12:42:18] Cap: Thanks

[A18 12:45:06] Moonsong: Tristan.

[A18 12:46:48] Cap: yeah?

[A18 12:48:41] Moonsong: When I said I was wrong in how I handled things?
[A18 12:49:19] Moonsong: I wonder every day if I should have gone further and killed you.

[A18 12:51:40] Cap: lovely
[A18 12:51:48] Cap: you had to spoil it.
[A18 12:52:06] Cap has disconnected.

⊙

Connecting to “4’&{N8\<v%369ZAM”
Resolving Host Name
Connecting…
Connected.
Using identity “3A::u@T_Enki”
No Topic Set

X29V5n: you’re the latino kid?

3A::u@T_Enki: yeah. how does this work?

X29V5n: You into memorabilia then?

3A::u@T_Enki: sure. memorabilia. I miss my old collection

X29V5n: The person who referred you should have explained most of it

3A::u@T_Enki: some

X29V5n: Let’s say you’re into commemorative plates. Plate with a hero or a villian’s face on it. You care a lot about the plate and its delivery

3A::u@T_Enki: sure

X29V5n: We ensure you get the result you want.
X29V5n: Insurance

3A::u@T_Enki: sounds like just what I need

X29V5n: We offer tiers. Different tiers for various degrees of thoroughness.

3A::u@T_Enki: can you give me a quick rundown?

X29V5n: Most basic tier, you throw a few hundred our way, depending on who is involved, who we put forward and who you expect is going to need to hear it, words. We talk, we let them know we’re serious about wanting X, Y & Z. No hassle. We throw our weight around a bit. Yeah?

3A::u@T_Enki: yeah

X29V5n: Maybe you want to ensure that plate ends up in the most ideal condition. A thousand or a few thousand covers a bit of roughing up. Scratch on the face, scuffing, the sort of thing that can be fixed up.

3A::u@T_Enki: can we maybe not talk about commemorative plates? maybe action figures? plates make me think of my abuela

X29V5n: If you want more coverage for your action figures, depending if we’re talking b-lister or a-lister or something bigger, we might be talking upwards of five, ten thou for more severe damage. Ruined leg, arm, the sort of damage to the face that would take an expert to restore.

3A::u@T_Enki: getting pretty steep

X29V5n: We’re talking cape shit. It’s in high demand, limited supply. Prices climb.

3A::u@T_Enki: just observing. is there a higher tier? what’s the highest tier?

X29V5n: Highest tier covers complete and total destruction. Pulling out all the stops. Starts at twenty thou, but I gotta warn you, the sky is the limit.

3A::u@T_Enki: that sounds good

X29V5n: Good.

3A::u@T_Enki: would you be willing to let me pay half upfront? we’d keep you guys in reserve? particulars get complicated

X29V5n: We work with complicated. Yes. That could be workable.
X29V5n: We will need to negotiate pricing. Did they tell you how to send the image of the product?

3A::u@T_Enki: u5zxN8wEXAKpbBeqzvzy.i

X29V5n: Perfect.
X29V5n: No wait.
X29V5n: You got the instructions very wrong, kid.

3A::u@T_Enki: it’s fine

X29V5n: You’re sure? There’s something deeply wrong with this.

3A::u@T_Enki: why don’t we meet for the rest? I’ll send you the first half now
3A::u@T_Enki: there

X29V5n: Alright. Let’s talk meeting places.

⊙

Connecting to “pChat.ParahumansOnline.TeamReach(6667)” (Attempt 80)
Resolving Host Name
Connecting…
Connected.
Using identity “Cap”
Welcome to Team Reach Private Chat. Forum thread.
Could not load chat archive. Click here to try again.
[A18 22:08:16] Cap has joined the chat.
[A18 22:08:31] Cap: hey

[A18 22:09:43] Tribute: Fuck me

[A18 22:10:51] Moonsong: It’s fine. Don’t stress.

[A18 22:11:22] Cap: hi moo – wish I knew how you did that

[A18 22:12:45] Moonsong: Hi boo. How are you doing?

[A18 22:13:18] Cap: doing okay. just had a very surreal experience talking to a certain kind of professional.

[A18 22:14:20] Moonsong: That’s good to hear, I think.

[A18 22:14:33] Tribute: ?

[A18 22:15:21] Moonsong: Best not to talk about it, though.

[A18 22:16:30] Cap: yeah

[A18 22:17:55] Moonsong: I’ve missed you terribly, boo. We should catch up.

[A18 22:18:18] Cap: I want to
[A18 22:18:30] Cap: I don’t know if we should

[A18 22:19:34] Moonsong: *nods*

[A18 22:19:51] Cap: I just wanted to say hi
[A18 22:20:00] Cap: maybe bye
[A18 22:20:09] Cap: ask you not to come after me or anything

[A18 22:21:58] Moonsong: *nods*
[A18 22:23:10] Moonsong: So long as the professional you hired has it covered.

[A18 22:23:50] Cap: yeah. covered

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♦ Topic: Amnesty & The Devil We Know
In: Boards ► News ► Events ► Gimel.US
E.S.Reaver
Posted on August 19th, Y1:

I’ve seen a few articles and wanted to compile them. There’s a narrative here, if you don’t grasp it then bear with me an I’ll sum up my thoughts at the end.

Article: Strange Reversals: Villain to Hero & Forum Thread
The number of heroes is rising. Multiple known villains have shucked off the black capes for white ones. Which is a good thing, right?

Article: No Witnesses Remain & Forum Thread
The article identifies three villains who we know about in heroic groups – two with the Wardens and one with Shelter. They committed crimes, we have some limited information or scraps of wiki articles, but the witnesses of those past crimes are either dead or yet to establish themselves. We established standards for amnesty, but sometimes those standards can’t be met. The ex-villains find places on the team with nobody to naysay.

Article: Two Black Raincoats & Forum Thread
Let’s get to the examples. Four youths tried to get superpowers by working off of the ‘trigger’ theory of power gain, and became a newsworthy case in 2004. The event got out of hand, one boy and one girl took charge and preyed on the two younger members of the group, torturing them over the course of a weekend. Nobody gained powers, the search for the missing children led to the two older children being identified as they went into town on the Monday to get food and buy power tools, including a circular saw. They revealed the location of their victims; one of whom apparently lost fingers as the wire that was used to attach them to the toilet tank was too tight. Unnamed Boy was sent to juvie. Unnamed Girl was sent to psychiatric care. Both gained powers while in care, both were released in or around 2009. Reuniting, now with powers, they killed three people, wearing black raincoats to keep the blood off, and were not caught. They have been spotted in several locations at the Rochester span, wearing the black raincoats.

“For the time being, the amnesty applies,” Chief Armstrong stated to the media. “We know where they are and we’re keeping tabs.”

Good enough?

Article: “Rended”, “Torn Up”, “Dismembered” & Forum Thread
Written after Miss Militia and Vista, heroines under the Wardens, were seen on several occasions in the company of Hellhound, also known as Bitch or Rachel Lindt. Raises questions about the moral compromise the amnesty has wrought and the longstanding allegations that the Protectorate team in Brockton Bay was cooperating with the local villains. Once the relationship is established and we’re reminded of the past examples, the article devotes the latter half to reminding us of some of Rachel Lindt’s deeds when she was working with a group of warlords to seize Brockton Bay.

“Every day, I wake up and I try to move my leg. The wind gets knocked out of me when it doesn’t move like it should. If I’m active at all during the day, then the pain hits me in the evening.”

Article: Fallen: What You Need To Know & Forum Thread
The Fallen operate as a cult and they’re one of the largest cape groups around. The article doesn’t talk about it directly, but the forum thread has some great posts on the subject (see page 3 and 12). Their recruitment numbers are swelling and I (and others!) think it’s the amnesty that’s letting them get away with it. There’s a lot of talk of Lachlan Hund [article linked] elsewhere and there might be a court case revolving around what others are saying was a powers-assisted abduction. Totally Fallen M.O. for years prior, family says Lachlan never showed any pro-Fallen sentiment before this.

Article: No Cost & Forum Thread
Same article author as ‘No Witnesses Remain’. Following up on several villains who didn’t turn hero, the author finds two villains, both anonymous, who claim they received accommodations, at a time when many were still living in the tent cities. They got ahead of the ‘line’, they got basic apartments and utilities paid for, and they contribute nothing except the fact that they aren’t (as far as we know) committing crimes these days. It’s like we’ve caved to extortion.

---

We need to have a dead serious conversation about the amnesty. Justice shouldn’t fall by the wayside. Absolutely horrific individuals get their second chances but they get them at the expense of the safety and peace of mind of others. They get things easier.

We heard the arguments why at the start. We had other things to think about and deal with. Heroes had other things. We thought. We dealt. The heroes handled the biggest needs. That was then.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not buying into the anti-cape sentiment you see here and there.

But I’m anti-these-capes. I’m anti-this.

(Showing Page 52 of 52)

► Dive Bucket
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
Where do they go tho? What are we supposed to do?
• No birdcage
• No max-sec prisons
• Bare bones legal system
• No stable government to put either of those in place
• No resources
• No records
• No witnesses (as OP says)

► Erasmus
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
We have strict control over the portals. Send them out to Bet. Close the doors. Or guard them

► mlekk (is mlekk)
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
/mlekk oozes in
mlekk thinks that would cause more probselms than it solves
mlekk thinks they would want to attack the doors
mlekk thinks of the refugees who haven’t made it to us yet
mlekk decides BAD IDEA
/mlekk oozes out

► Mangled_Wings
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
What’s wrong with extortion? What’s wrong with taking measures?

If you stand at the bottom of a hill and a car starts rolling down it with nobody in the drivers seat what do you do?

The way some of you imbeciles are talking about this I can’t help but think you would stand there bitching about the situation until the car hits you.

Get out of their way first and then make sure it wasn’t one part of bigger problem or disaster.

Then and only then do you address the problem with your indignation and sense of injustice cold, clear, and gripped in steady hands. Find some weapon or power and take action.

► Team_Lancer
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
@ Mangled_Wings
1) villains aren’t cars. villains are humans. they’re accountable for their actions.
2) we have more choices than ‘get out of their way’. We’re part of a greater society. We have the choice of catering to them or treating them like the scumbags they are. we’re accountable for how we respond to them. our government is accountable for how they respond to them.
3) ‘imbeciles’ isn’t helping foster good discussion
4) can someone please ban mlekk? They’re in every other thread. Admin said they would deal with low-investment content
5) why the fuck is mlekk one of the only people with working badges?

► Mangled_Wings
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
There are three kinds of villain. There are villains at rest that don’t do anything unless bothered and they may be easy to bother. Don’t bother them unless you’re sure you’re stronger than them. If you don’t have powers you aren’t stronger than them.

There are villains in motion. They want something or they’re going somewhere. Don’t get in their way unless you’re a lot stronger than them. Catch them from the flanks or from behind if you’re strong and clever enough.

These two kinds of villain don’t budge. I’ve known a lot of them. I know how they operate. It takes a lot to move the ones at rest and it takes a lot to change the course of the ones in motion. You can’t do either. Don’t try.

The third kind is the kind worth paying attention to and they’re the ones that are changing or that can change. Objects in motion stay in motion and objects at rest stay at rest and the times and situations to watch out for are when they change states.

The people bitching here don’t know enough and don’t have the power to handle any of that. Get stronger. Get smarter. Leave it to the people who know stuff to tell each group apart and to know when to handle things.

► New_Ohmstar
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
Like you?
You act like you’re the only one who understands the situation
What guarantee is there that they’re ever going to handle things?
People and institutions do what is easiest.
(P.S. Mlekk is only one deserving of badge. Cult of mlekk!)

► Ron_of_Couches
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
Adding articles, part III (Keeping to OP’s format):

Valkyrie Interviewed and Thread Link
Rising star in the Wardens. Exceptionally powerful, many references to the Green Maiden or something? Might harken back to before my time. She is asked directly about this in the interview and deflects.

Shepherd’s Crook and Thread Link (not many posts)
Team started up and fell apart. Reason why? One ex-nemesis and lover of the team leader was invited to the team. They went full yoko. Shepherds no more.

Endemic is the word.

► Mangled_Wings
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
Like me, New_Ohmstar. I have worked with more than twenty villains. I am a villain. When I give you recommendations about leaving sleeping dogs alone I am referring to myself. When I tell you that you want to get out of the way if I have something I want? Referring to myself.

I am not one of the leeches. I pay for my own apartment. I make no trouble. Yet. Yes I am talking to the heroes. They keep their eye on me and I keep my eye on them. There are other factors. This makes degrees of sense you are not equipped to comprehend. For now it is fine and you should take my word for it.

I’m aiming to get stronger. I’m aiming to get smarter. I am not the only one doing this. If you spend your time bitching on the internet instead of doing the same then you’re one of the imbeciles because things are changing and you will fall behind.

I can verify any of this if I must but I don’t know how as I am new to this site.

► Point_Me_@_The_Sky
Replied on August 19th, Y1:
If you send me a private message, I can walk you through it. It would be faster to contact an active admin directly.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … 50, 51, 52

⊙

♦ Private Conversation with Point_Me_@_The_Sky

Mangled_Wings: You said you’d help.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Hello to you too.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Click on your username while reading any thread you’ve posted in. Go to the Help panel. There will be a list of options. Third box, second option, badge verification You might want to open a new window so you can go back from this convo to that

Mangled_Wings: It says import image.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Take a picture of yourself in costume and a piece of paper with your username on it. Connect phone or camera to computer. Find the image and select it, hit the ‘select’ button on the bottom corner of the window.

Mangled_Wings: I don’t have a phone or camera.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Does your computer have a camera built into the monitor?

Mangled_Wings: Yes.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: OS360?

Mangled_Wings: Yes. I think.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Draw the circle in the center of the desktop to open the radial menu. Hit ‘C’ and camera should be something visible. Open it, wait for your image to appear. You’ll want to be in costume. Hit space.

Mangled_Wings: It made a shutter sound.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You were in costume already?

Mangled_Wings: It’s fine.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Sure. You’ll find the picture in the ‘pictures’ bubble

Mangled_Wings: Thank you. I found it. I imported it. It wants me to put in a label before I hit select.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: ‘Villain’, I guess. I don’t know if you really want to do that. You might want to go ‘Cape’ if you want to fly under the radar. People are sore about villains these days.

Mangled_Wings: I don’t fly under the radar. I know what I am and I know what I’ll be, if I don’t die first. Thank you for the help. I respect this more than I respect the more self-pitying of the invertebrates out there.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Alright.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’m unfortunately afflicted with desire to help people.

Mangled_Wings: A dire inflection, that.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: 0:) I don’t know if you’re at rest or moving or if you’re open to change, but you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Things will go smoother if you don’t call them invertebrates or imbeciles
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: And maybe stay at rest a little longer, given the chance?
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I think they really need it
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: We all need it.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Also. It just occurred to me. If you connect at a library, you’ll want to delete the image before you go. Overwrite it once it is deleted to be sure.

Mangled_Wings: You kill more flies with vinegar in reality.
Mangled_Wings: A person can rest only so long. I’m restless.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: What a pity.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Spend more time online. Geek out. Learn! Less time spent being bad!

Mangled_Wings: I am not averse to learning. We will see if there is any pity to be had.
Mangled_Wings: I am at a library. I will do that.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You can draw the circle and hit ‘o’ to find overwrite.

Mangled_Wings: I already found it. Thank you. Goodbye.

⊙

♦ Invitation to Group Conversation by Strange_Mammal

Strange_Mammal: aaaaand I think this is her…

Mangled_Wings: I’m here.

Strange_Mammal: we thought you’d be one of the stragglers

Mangled_Wings: I don’t straggle. At worst I am fashionably late.

Strange_Mammal: you said you hadn’t really used a computer before

Mangled_Wings: I hadn’t. I’m a fast learner.

Cap: this is A?

Strange_Mammal: it’s A…
Strange_Mammal: …we’re using first-letters to stay on down-low…
Strange_Mammal: …until we figure out what we’re doing

Cap: how long did it take to figure it out, A?

Mangled_Wings: Less than an hour. Mammal is?

Strange_Mammal: C.

Mangled_Wings: I see.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: !!! A!

Mangled_Wings: This would be K.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i was viewing old videos and saw some vids of u

Mangled_Wings: I didn’t know I had any.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: so cool
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: so x-ited to b working with u.

Strange_Mammal: @ K / Heart_Shaped_Pupil…
Strange_Mammal: …type like a grown up…
Strange_Mammal: …my eyes are already bleeding

Cap: hahaha

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Got it!
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m saving vids. Show you at next face2face meet.

Mangled_Wings: Okay.

Cap: we still waiting on S & R

Strange_Mammal: they said they would have some trouble getting access

Cap: yes. I got to go. we check in again same time. hammer something out?

Mangled_Wings: Yes.

Strange_Mammal: I will keep an eye out for R & S

Cap has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Downloading downloading…
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Getting off chat to download faster. Bye!
Heart_Shaped_Pupil has left the conversation.

Mangled_Wings: Bye.
Mangled_Wings: Ah. That was fast.
Mangled_Wings: I’ll go too.

Strange_Mammal: fyi?

Mangled_Wings: I don’t know this word.

Strange_Mammal: for your information…
Strange_Mammal: …others can see time you spend online on your profile. you spent longer than one hour…
Strange_Mammal: …you’ve been online all day.

Mangled_Wings: I am at the library. Something to do with that, I’d think.

Strange_Mammal: it doesn’t work that way. I am 95% sure.
Strange_Mammal: there is no need to lie, A
Strange_Mammal: the reason for this project is supposed to be we know each other
Strange_Mammal: K will find out if she does not already know. she pays attention to those things

Mangled_Wings: If you are 95% sure there is still 5% chance you are wrong. Assume you are wrong before you get on my bad side.
Mangled_Wings: You do not want to get on my bad side.

Strange_Mammal: ok

You have left the conversation.

Welcome to the Parahumans Online message boards.
You are currently logged in, of5

Searching for:
• Threads…
• …with the term Multi-trigger or…
• …with the term Grab-Bag or…
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• …show topics and replies made within the last year.

⊙

♦ Topic: [JRPNA] Use of Cluster Powers, Serial Powers, Matched Powers, and Nth-generation Powers to identify ‘Hinge Points’ in Power Expression – 1998
In: Boards ► Parahuman Science
Azavael (PRT Science)
Posted on : June 4th, 2002

[Article] Studies into Parahuman abilities presently catalogue studied powers into three major databases: the PRT database in the US, the Cambridge Parahuman Studies facility, and the EUJP International Listing. The lists are formed by way of interview and laboratory studies with each institution using universally standardized forms in addition to supplementary material. Each of these three institutions have stated an express or strongly-implied desire to understand and predict expressions of power and tie these expressions to the inciting incidents. However, a longstanding problem in this process is that powers expressed, inciting incidents, and contextual factors can be dramatically different across individual cases. While some common themes can be drawn out, derived results are traditionally very big-picture. It is only recently that databases have begun to include sufficient numbers of special-case triggers that allow more focused study of how powers are expressed. We identified cluster powers, serial powers, matched powers, and Nth-generation powers as the special cases to focus on in more focused examination of how power instances can be mapped and we posit a ‘Hinge Point’ illustration of power expression and theory.

[Definitions] • Cluster powers are defined as powers wherein multiple inciting incidents occur either simultaneously or within a minute of one another. Such parahumans will have a collection of smaller powers related to the others. • Serial powers are defined as cases where an individual or multiple individuals in longstanding proximity to a parahuman will develop powers…

[Click to read full article]

(5 of 280 replies match search criteria)

► of5
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
Link is broken.

► WMD377 (PRT Science Admin)
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
Yes. Tagged. It’s good to keep track and note this. This article was pretty important to the time. It would be worth finding someone with it in print and transcribing. Keep letting us know. It helps us track which articles are most important & desired. What’s your field?

► Doubletime_Collies
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
I have this one. I can transcribe over the weekend. Want me to DM you the transcription, of5?

► of5
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
That would be helpful. Thank you. No field – I am furthest thing from scholar. Lot of this is going over my head. Personal interest only.

► WMD377 (PRT Science Admin)
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
Keep in mind that serial and Nth-Generation (2nd gen, 3rd gen) powers are now the same thing.

End of Page 1. Click to view full list of pages.

⊙

♦ Topic: Multi-Trigger Case Studies – Parahumans 303 Class Notes (Spinky) – September 15th 2009
In: Boards ► Parahuman Science ►Non-Articles
Rightsector
Posted on : September 17th, 2009

From Wednesdays with Prof Spinky. Posted with permission. Cleaned up where I could

Overview: What are clusters?
Other names are mosaic p. expression, grabbag, multi
Effect on resulting power
Why important & Importance to study.
Case studies
Greater effects, things to keep in mind

Pt. 1: What are clusters?
2-6 people trigger at same time or very close together. Each gets a suite of powers. Person A gets Person A primary power and fragment of B, C, D, E, F.
Person B gets Person B primary power and fragment A, C, D, etc.

Pt 2: Effect on resulting power
Term secondary expressions. Weaker or subtle power. Can be conditional.
Primary powers may be weaker than if they had triggered alone?
Powers inspired by others but not identical. Relation may be tertiary.
Example given firebreath -> fire something or something breath
Prof stresses this is very basic example
Term for staying element is hinge (old) or dominant (current). Relates to 1998 article.

Pt 3: Why important & importance to study
Suggests powers aren’t 100% predetermined. Certain elements are highlighted or made dominant.
We can extrapolate from studies like this & serial triggers to work out key elements of existing triggers. What changes & why = what factors are important in standalone non-special trigger?

Case Studies: two cases & how we look at them
Two case studies. Interview, self-reporting, examination

Case Study #1: Sunder Bros
Take note for future week: matched powers. We come back to this.
Brother #1 – Destruction caused to objects ripples out indefinitely, stopping at clear demarcations (images included in lecture notes). Weapon extension without limit (except convenience)
Brother #2 – Weapon sweep extension – some range extension – wider arcs, shockwaves left/right of swing. Stomp to destroy ground in immediate area.

Class pauses, prof asks & responds to input re: dominant factors in each power.

Cute girl in red top finally comes up with answer that satisfies Spinky. Destruction & weapon attack augmentation dominant/staying/hinge factors. Question of range vs. breadth between brothers. Not very lopsided in power difference b/w primary & secondary power. Spinky’s stress on not.

We get some slides of brother’s recreation of trigger circumstance. Distance from threat. Prof Spinky highlights personality traits brothers used on forms they filled out. All as reasoning for different power expressions.

Case Study #2: Fowl & Fair (foreign capes, names that follow are badly translated)
Oxfair – Physical augmentation; size, strength, speed, agility (<- primary), deafening roar, transfer harm from falls/some impacts to nearby others, pain resistance/faster healing
Ramfair – Emotion affecting chant, size increase, some ability to heal very recent damage of others listening to chant/that touching, gather strength/concentrate -> giant leaps
Foulcock (yes, the class laughed) – Flight with build-up of speed over time, speed is transferred to touched others, interrupting flight to deliver high-impact blows. Increased agility, deafening shriek, fast recovery of smaller wounds (scratches yes, no recovery of larger wounds).
Foulpig – Personal biokinesis, swell into flesh bubble with fast recovery/personal mutations if not ‘popped’ in time. Some strength & size increase, but slower while grown. Ability to ‘roll’ with incoming impacts (mover expression? Turns into boulder). Guttural noise (flatulence? Burps?) to interrupt thought processes – turn off others’ brains momentarily.

Discussion of dynamic. Fair & foul on opposite sides post-trigger. Only fair provided answers & allowed power testing, rest has to be inferred. Handouts.

Some discussion of trigger event (see slides for images), some discussion of resulting ‘package’. Powers for each individual distinct but play off each other in semi-complementary way. Reflective of personality? Or ‘guiding hand’ principle?

Pt. 4: Greater effects & things to keep in mind – things touched on in homework reading:
Kill / Kiss – more on this in parahuman psychology class in a few weeks
Personality Bleed – personality traits bleed over from 1 individual to other? Messy
Higher incidences of paranoia, confrontation, aggression, PTSD. Less bounce back?
Higher rate of death post-trigger. Kill / kiss again. Graph
Prof Spinky stresses emotional states may play into the above. Triggers that are sufficient to draw in multiple individuals are worse than average. Can’t jump 2 conclusions. Correlation =/= causation.

(2 of 1140 replies match search criteria)

► of5
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
Lecture slides & graph missing.

► DigaWell
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
ty again of5. nothing we can do about that one

End of Page 1. Click to view full list of pages.

⊙

♦ Joined Group Conversation: Questionable_Mammal, Heart_Shaped_Pupil, Cap

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: R!

of5: Hi K. Missed you earlier. Am at library with friend. Researching.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: this is friend you’ve talked about 😉 ?
of5: She is the friend. She is helping with technical side, searches.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hi friend! Thank you for being good to our R!
of5: She at another computer now. I got her bored. I wouldn’t join this chat if she was watching.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: aw

of5: We stumped atm. Everythink links to outside articles. Dead ends. Most stuff I already know.
of5: and I know v. little
of5: a isn’t here?

Questionable_Mammal: I scared her off…
Questionable_Mammal: …she will be back I think. We still waiting on S. Technical issues. She’s @ workshop later this week…
Questionable_Mammal: …you need A?

of5: No. j/w.
of5: Wanted k actually.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: yuss! \♥/

of5: you know this site. I want search terms to find some people. Articles, anything else. Would need to cover a lot of bases. Normal site search limits # of terms.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: uh. that hard. you want packaged search string
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i can try

Questionable_Mammal: you’re looking for others in your set?

of5: yes

Questionable_Mammal: I can make attempt. gimme time. you might want to fine tune after.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: aw!

of5: Thanks. I owe you one.
Questionable_Mammal: I got games btw. Will give on next meet.
of5: I owe you two

Questionable_Mammal: no. not big deal…
Questionable_Mammal: …go keep researching
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: entertain lady friend!
Questionable_Mammal: …and that

of5: getting off chat. friend blames slow connection through node.
of5: ty again

Questionable_Mammal: I DM you when I have something…
Questionable_Mammal: …keep eye out

⊙

♦ Topic: [EUJPR] Relationship Entanglement in Cluster-Triggers – 2005
In: Boards ► Parahuman Science
Jr_Max
Posted on : February 18th, 2005

[Translation] Colloquially known as the kill/kiss dynamic, in cluster-triggers, there is a very high tendency toward passionate relationships, either hostility or partnership. Clusters have a 40% chance of one member murdering another, rising to a 50% chance when including attempted murder, 25% chance of a partnership forming, and a 10% incidence of partnership and murder coinciding. The term partnership is used for romantic pairings in instances where sexuality and gender allow, and close friendship or formed teams with members in other cases. In some (10% of) cases of close partnerships forming, the romantic pairing occurred despite one’s typical sexuality. The relationship entanglement study looks at existing cases and clusters to investigate why.

The most dramatic case in recent memory is the Stáj, also known as the Stable, or the Foul and the Fair. The Good Ox was turned into a grisly display […]

[Click to read full article]

(3 of 79 replies match search criteria)

► of5
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
No article on click.

► Dana & Evan (Student)
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
It wasn’t a terribly good one. Doesn’t read as a solid study so much as a commentary. I’d give it a pass. The same details are covered in more depth elsewhere. I’ll see what I can dig up.

► of5
Replied on August 20th, Y1:
Thanks

End of Page 1. Click to view full list of pages.

⊙

♦ Private message from 17593Q183H17953R9713E714693

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: 974641T17953A8209746413R173901761R796520

of5: ?

■

♦ Joined Group Conversation: Questionable_Mammal, Heart_Shaped_Pupil

of5: Got a strange message. Friend says it might be a bot. String of numbers & letters?

Questionable_Mammal: could be.

of5: Could be s?

Questionable_Mammal: S isn’t that bad with computers…
Questionable_Mammal: …Block & move on….
Questionable_Mammal: …btw, here is search result for you.

■

♦ Private message from 17593Q183H17953R9713E714693

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: Had to check.

of5: ??

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: If you were one of mine.

of5: I’m going to do what my friends said and block you if you don’t explain.

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: You’re clearly looking for info on multis.

of5: Yes
of5: I am.

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: I can provide.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: We can collaborate.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: Is important to have others to watch your back

of5: I’ve found some people.

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: Unless you are a member of a very new cluster, limited # of people you can be.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: I found most of the group at I-275. Rest of them wouldn’t be searching online like you are.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: I found two members of the shipwreck group. They might be doing what you’re doing with the searching but they know the code. They’re friends of mine. Third member of that group is dead.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: The lecture hall: if you were one of them, you wouldn’t be so naive.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: That leaves three options. The Kansas Cornfield massacre: 3 dead, 1 alive with no reason to care about multis. He ate the rest of his cluster.

of5: Ate?

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: The book fair. Only ones still alive there are within spitting distance of me.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: Ate. I know why, too. I can share, but not for free.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: Leaves two good options. I can skip one because it’s mine.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: You’re part of the new cluster from the mall.

of5: No comment.

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: I found one of you already. I reached out to him first. He said no. Bad for him. Lucky for you.

of5: Lucky?

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: The one I talked to said there’s a woman, two boys, and him. I’m going to assume you’re the one I’ve termed the runt. The smallest, easiest target.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: The woman is gathering funds to hire mercenaries and come after you. The one I talked to hired an information broker to find you. Her name is Tattletale. She’s good. She has resources. including the mercenaries I just mentioned. She’s also preoccupied for now.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: A favor from me to you.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: That leaves you & the last one. It sounds like all 3 are coordinating vs. you.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: I can just about guarantee the people they’re gathering together are better than the ones you got.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: You need help. You’ve got a case of Kiss/Kill like I never saw and I don’t think they’re reaching for the chapstick.

of5: You’re wrong

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: About the need for help?

of5: It isn’t Kiss/Kill.
of5: I’ll take any help I can get.
of5: Provided I can get some clue you’re legit.

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: Glad to hear.

of5: and some idea of what you’re really after

17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: You. And a chance to deal with some mutual enemies.
17593Q183H17953R9713E714693: I’ll be in touch.

■

Searched for:
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One result.

♦ Topic: Public Incident Report [Aug 16]
In: Boards ► Teams ► Gunslingers
Lucky Luke (Hero)
Posted on : August 16th, Y1

[…] We were ultimately unable to stop them, as they had two capes we had no information or records on. The first of the capes may have been a thinker, likely the same that shot down our flier. We were unable to glean much more from them, other than the fact they wore fur in the midst of a heatwave.

The second individual seems to be a grab-bag cape. She was a woman with a fanged mask covering her lower face, and a form-fitting dress with a slit up the side of one leg. She displayed a mover power [fourth term] with the ability to run on walls. She produced an emotion-affecting [third term] roar, which broke the ranks of one of the cooperating teams, and had metal claws [second term] which looked to be of tinker make. These claws may have been what enabled her to tear [First term not met, but within allowance] down doors and other barricades with the ease she did. We have the beginnings of a work-up going online shortly.

The attack on the store opening was a failure on our side. We were late to the scene due to geography and we lacked full knowledge of our adversaries. It is our belief that with PHO in working order and more collaborative tools and measure being put in place every day, that we will succeed next time where we failed this once. We are working with authorities to keep an eye out for the stolen merchandise.[…]

■

♦ Joined Group Conversation: Questionable_Mammal, Heart_Shaped_Pupil, Cap

of5: Thank you, c.

Questionable_Mammal: I thought that one result looked good

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: pretty nasty customer

of5: It is. She is.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: are you looking after your friend?

of5: not nearly enough

Questionable_Mammal: did you get the bot thing handled?

of5: Bot thing handled. blocked & moved on.
of5: This woman… concerns me. I’ll figure out a plan of action later.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: we’ll figure out a plan of action later >:)
of5: Thanks. And thanks again, c.
of5: You’re good kids.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: 😀

Cap has joined the chat.

Questionable_Mammal: no personal details online, ya?

Cap: ?

of5: Right. Sorry.

Questionable_Mammal: nothing big, Cap

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Go get ur friend a thank you treat. Giant heart-shaped cookie!

Cap: subtle

of5: I don’t know about cookies. There’s a place to get ice cream.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Go, shoo!

You have left the conversation.

Subject: Your Nilles University Application
August 21st, Y1
Dear Applicant (Point_Me_@_The_Sky@mail)

We regret to inform you that your application for graduate study in our department was turned down. We look at each application and applicant as a whole and decisions are based on a composite of information including your previous academic performance, referrals, relevant professional activities, proposed research statements, and test scores.

Due to a high volume of applicants, this message has been partially automated. Your application was received by paper and email and discussed by me and one other faculty member. We responded by email as per your preference. We would like to stress, for your particular application:
• That we would very much like you to apply again in future years.
• That we would encourage you to use the same email address, as we can easily tie it back to this application.
• We felt your academics were very strong.
• We felt your extracurriculars were exceptional.
• We felt your references were exceptional.
• In a time when records are often lacking and references may be hard to identify or contact, your application stood above and beyond in how complete and thorough it was.

Nilles is one of three Universities serving an estimated population of fifty million on Earth Gimel and its associated territories, and it is the sole post-secondary institution offering graduate studies. Over one and a half million bright and eager minds have applied to Nilles in avid hope of starting or resuming their educations, and regretfully, with our current facilities, we cannot accept more than twenty thousand.

Although these circumstances mean we must regretfully send you an unfavorable response, we appreciate your application. We wish you the best in your future endeavors and look forward to hearing from you next year.

Yours truly,
Dr. Marilyn Ginbar
Graduate Advisor

⊙

♦ Private Messages from Glitzglam:

Glitzglam: Friend said emails out today

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I got mine this morning.

Glitzglam: And? ? ?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Same as last year.

Glitzglam: : (

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: We have completed a review of your applic’n. Paperwork good. Grades good. X’lars good. Refs good. You’re perfect.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: But the world ended two years ago, sorry! No place for you now. Please apply next year. We’ll keep track of your applic’n and the fact you applied last year, we promise!
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: no mention in this yrs letter about me applying last year so I do have my doubts

Glitzglam: aw hon 🙁
Glitzglam: why tho? My friend got in and I know his ap wasn’t as good

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: why do you think?
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: That’s a serious Q’n btw. Because I don’t know
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Rational part of me thinks high demand program + only so many grad students allowed in
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: That part of me outnumbered 14 to 1 tho

Glitzglam: hm hm
Glitzglam: very specific #

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’ve been thinking about it all day. Made a list. Lots of unreasonable answers that are semi-possible. sentiment / reference backstabs me / people with ties to uni staff get in first / uni tied to gov + gov wants specific focus for research
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I could go on. I know some of those sound crazy
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: + all of that? If true then no reason to think next year will be different. Last year was a third the number applicants, they accepted 2.5%. This year, what? 1.4%?

Glitzglam: um

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Could be multiple of above. could be none.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Enough about me. How is training going?

Glitzglam: is fine. not important.
Glitzglam: Im going to visit as soon as possible
Glitzglam: k?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: No need to treat me with kid gloves. We all suspected this would happen.

Glitzglam: honestly ?
Glitzglam: we all were saying 2 temper expectations
Glitzglam: but we would wink as we said it
Glitzglam: we thought u would get in

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: That doesn’t make me feel better

Glitzglam: have u told everyone?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: no
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Today I have stuff to do. I work and think.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Might go for long trip before h.school semester starts + I get busy with work. Visit home.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Share after I get back I think.

Glitzglam: K. Im visiting 2. field exercises today tomorrow. team want to meet for drinks on day off. I think I might take off nstead. home 4 sure. m/b u?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’m okay. But do me a favor?

Glitzglam: anything

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: If you stop by? I set up tarps by house. Make sure they still there & no water getting through? Lost cause maybe

Glitzglam: can do
Glitzglam: u sure u ok?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’m not. But I’m the ok sort of not ok. I’ve gotten good at effective brooding
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Our little parcel of humanity is sprawled haphazardly across 15+ alt earths. Has to be a place for us somewhere right?

Glitzglam: right
Glitzglam: and speaking of places. I got 2 take off becuz my place is 2 be doing drills

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Be safe. Say hi to the family for me. I’ll drop by soon.

You have logged out, Questionable_Cephalopod
Click here to login.

⊙

Welcome to the Parahumans Online message boards.
You are currently logged in, Curious_Cephalopod
You are viewing:
• Threads in your curated list. Edit that list Here.
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♦ Private Conversation with A_real (Admin):
Please note that conversations with site administrators may be recorded and reviewed.

Curious_Cephalopod: hello?

A_real: Hello. Thank you for the prompt response. I’m Sydney

Curious_Cephalopod: I can guess what this is about

A_real: According to our systems you have 32 individual accounts that you’re rotating through.

Curious_Cephalopod: this is true

A_real: Is it really needed to have one individual account for each day of the month and one for what I assume are holidays?

Curious_Cephalopod: not what I was doing…
Curious_Cephalopod: …but would be amusing with some reshuffling…
Curious_Cephalopod: …assuming it was allowed…
Curious_Cephalopod: …I’m guessing you will say it isn’t

A_real: Duplicate accounts are of concern when it comes to tracking action across accounts

Curious_Cephalopod: I see

A_real: Isn’t that a hassle to manage 32 separate accounts?

Curious_Cephalopod: I use a program to copy over settings

A_real: I see.

Curious_Cephalopod: I checked ToS. I don’t think any of this is against the rules

A_real: But why do it?

Curious_Cephalopod: security. I’m being surveilled…
Curious_Cephalopod: …doing this lets me find out things

A_real: Surveilled?

Curious_Cephalopod: yes

A_real: On PHO?

Curious_Cephalopod: if they were stalking me elsewere and not here where it’s stalker central then they would be bad at what they do…
Curious_Cephalopod: *elsewhere…
Curious_Cephalopod: …and they aren’t

A_real: If you’re trying to obfuscate, I have to question why you use a chain of names that connect to one another.

Curious_Cephalopod: I’m not trying to hide. I’m trying to find out things.

A_real: Do I need to notify authorities? If you’re joking, you need to tell me now.

Curious_Cephalopod: that would cause more problems than it fixes…
Curious_Cephalopod: …can we just say I’m joking and you agree and you can tell me what my punishment is…
Curious_Cephalopod: …or what I need to do to fix this issue?

A_real: I remain concerned.

Curious_Cephalopod: how about this?…
Curious_Cephalopod: …one second…
Curious_Cephalopod: …there. It should be in my user images.

A_real: Verification_For_Sydney.i
A_real: I see it. I see. I’m assuming that in a matter of days, if you’re an avian of some sort…

Curious_Cephalopod: Insect. Yes, I could supply a different verification image…
Curious_Cephalopod: …so can we chalk this up to a peculiarity of mine? Powers weirdness?

A_real: I’ll have to discuss with others.

Curious_Cephalopod: alright

A_real: I’m not wholly satisfied with this resolution. Either you were joking about something serious
A_real: Or you’re being cavalier about something serious

Curious_Cephalopod: Or I’m being watched and I’ve been under various kinds of observation for some time…
Curious_Cephalopod: …and this isn’t that serious. Consider me a curious sort of multi-limbed invertebrate who would be happy to be left alone…
Curious_Cephalopod: …except there’s always someone on the other side of the glass, tapping or taking notes. Ears pressed up against the walls. constant whispers…
Curious_Cephalopod: …things moved in my habitat when I’m not looking…

A_real: I think I have a sense of what you’re getting at.

Curious_Cephalopod: …anohd thgis poartiocular obdserver is benign

A_real: ?

Curious_Cephalopod: software glitch. it doesn’t like interruptions

A_real: I see.
A_real: I’m putting you down as a verified cape, with some notes. I’m not going to make this available to anyone looking at your profile unless you want it.

Curious_Cephalopod: I don’t

A_real: I would like to link all of your 32 accounts together. This might take a few hours of fiddling on my end. It would only be info available to us and to you

Curious_Cephalopod: and to any outside parties with access to my computer?

A_real: I would avoid letting anyone have that access, if possible.

Curious_Cephalopod: that will be fine. I will try and I’m fine with being linked up.

A_real: Thank you for cooperating. Have a good day.

⊙

♦ Topic: Multiversal Travel Warnings
In: Boards ► Gimel.US
Khain (Guild Staff)
Posted on August 22nd, Y1:

The Guild is presently established in three facilities outside of the city in Gimel.US, supporting authorities and serving as bodyguards and representatives for the onetime denizens of Earth Bet, as new areas are surveyed and contact with new cultures is made.

The process is exciting and interesting, and we report back as much as we are able, but it does have its hazards. After two recent incidents, we have decided to reach out to those we are familiar with, who are familiar with us. This forum is one of many places we’ll be striving to communicate needs and necessities.

Humans are explorers by nature. Our best count right now, excepting areas we cannot fully access, is that portals, devices, and tears between realities are currently allowing access to forty-seven Earths. Six of those Earths have been blocked off due to implicit threats or are fundamentally inaccessible. Two more have been closed off at the request of their denizens. Earth Aleph, which most Earth Bet residents are or were familiar with, has been blocked off as well.

Speak with authorities before making any trips to territories unknown. We don’t and can’t mount effective rescue operations if someone leaves and fails to return, but we have some ability to do so if and when authorities know where you’ve gone and you’ve stuck to the established route. People got lost or stranded in the wilderness on Earth in 2012, with all that world’s satellites. It can and will happen in new universes.

Do not travel to inhabited worlds. Absolutely do not make first contact. The first of the two incidents noted above was one where a family traveled across Earth Chamesh and happened across a settlement we were currently talking to. Much confusion and concern was had and we are still recovering.

The second is to please stick to charted territories. Exploring the uncharted is exciting, but if you aren’t equipped, you can come to harm, even if the world is uninhabited. One ex-Bet government (which shall remain unnamed) sent one expedition to Earth Achat. The Europe of that world was home to an invasive species, which grew as a tubular mold in dark, shadowed spaces, particularly in forest. Eating food exposed to the spores these molds created causes stomach cramps that progress to reflexive vomiting over the course of two to five days. The vomiting then lasts another two to five days, causing death by dehydration for any who don’t receive care.

Be aware:
• Earth Gimel has been partially explored and checked by thinkers. There are no guarantees. Except for some rare indigenous colonies, it is unsettled. Gimel has five major points of settlement, with civilization finding its foothold around these points. The City, as of yet unnamed, is the primary US point of settlement and one of the primary waypoints. The City is a megalopolis with a commonly cited population of fifty million. A rough map (one month out of date) here.
• Earth Mem has been partially settled by others from Bet. We are currently trying to establish some kind of communication and link.
For novice explorers and those looking to settle new territories, we would encourage Gimel and Mem as largely safe options.

• Earth Bet has been deemed uninhabitable. Contrary to popular belief, radiation is not a major concern. However, many industrial sites were either destroyed or have weathered the last two years of neglect poorly, with chemicals leeching into groundwater and settling in valleys. Terrible numbers of deceased humans and other living species have led to other health concerns, particularly in previously heavily settled areas that received heavy damage. There will always be those who attempt to hold onto what we have lost, and many persist in trying to maintain some existence on Bet. However, new incidents arise on what seems to be a weekly or twice-weekly basis, with one in three having to do with powers, the powered, untended tinker technology, masters, and lingering threats. We may one day return to Bet, as some groups have fervently expressed a desire to do, but we have a great deal of work to do before this is possible. It may not happen in our generation or our children’s generation. Be aware that if you choose to return to Bet (and most authorities agree you have the fundamental right to do so) you may have to re-apply for entry and you will very likely be putting your well being in peril.

Speak with authorities before traveling to any other worlds. More information on multiversal threats.

More information to be disclosed about outside threats and cultures as we have it.

(Showing Page 108 of 270)

► Ohearn
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
It’s about concentration. The fight happened near here. Scion attacked. We don’t know why but it might have had to do with the Slaughterhouse Nine, going by the news reports and what some have said. It might have had to do with the Simurgh. It could have been something else altogether. But things wrapped up near here. People came through and most of us picked two worlds to settle in, with Gimel as the big one.

But a lot of people fought. A lot of capes. Many were foreign. The fight ended… and then? We are doing or did our best to get them home, but not all want to go home. Or Scion didn’t leave them a home to go back to. A lot of them have gathered into like groups. That’s where we get the weird corner-world settlements.

► Venturain
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
the corner world places aren’t inherently bad tho, right? we (my family) just got into the city one month ago. right away pressure pressure. we can move into city but standardized rent and we need to earn wage and we may be asked to move. best option is to move to city periphery and farm. they say they will give us tools and resources to get started but good spots are taken or very far away and farming isn’t easy

corner worlds are closer in a way. go to noon, go to wherever from there.

if we aren’t reconstruction or farming we aren’t wanted. so why become cogs in the city’s machine? we can strike off on our own. minor risk but total freedom

► Slayer of Isaac
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
@ Venturain – that was our mindset. My family tried it.
We had the bad fortune of settling at one corner settlement. Two points removed. We got off to an okay start. Shelter up, food out, basic needs covered. Regular trips to the city to supply up and cover more advanced needs.

Winter of Year Zero caught us off guard. We thought we were ahead of what we needed but staying warm gets hard and getting warm means chopping wood, which means physical effort, which means needing more food.

I was handling most trips into the city. I was worn out and got real sick. My brother handled one trip, asked for help, came back with capes.

They helped, yeah. Then they took over. It was bad. You can find my photo diary on my user page.

My brother went out and asked for help again. The second time around, the capes were willing to fix the problem and leave. Most of us moved back to the city. Bitter feelings.

► Athonic
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
@ Venturain – there’s need for other work. doctors. teachers. there’s a need for people that are good at finding and vetting the skilled labor. finding qualified doctors and getting them to hospitals, finding teachers and helping to establish new schools.

organization is the hardest part.

many injured, many with special needs. i’m in robotics and prosthetics and there’s no shortage of need. my friend is a radiologist and he’s in high demand.

► Lex_Dogbell
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
Many of those things require education. Letters started arriving yesterday. Rejected, rejected, rejected. No education. My friends are saying government is holding off on setting up schools because there is so much need for physical labor, industry, agriculture.

► mlekk (was mlekk)
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
[User was banned for this post, badge changed]

► Ferris (Cape Dad)
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
Right now we don’t seem to have many threats at home. Things are quiet. The monsters are out there if they’re even alive. Sleeper is still in Zayin and seems contained there. The Birdcage was abandoned and we don’t know if the residents were left to starve. Few of the real monsters seem to be here. The dictators don’t have the infrastructure. Our best capes are off doing good work and seeing what’s out there. Our capes at home are calm and quiet. I’m okay with that.

► Fishmon
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
Not all of the dictators. Not every place was ruined. There are monsters out there who I will not name out of fear for my safety. They were kept in check back on Bet and nothing holds them back now that much of the world has evacuated. The weather may be bad there but they may not have had industry or other problems to taint things. Things are looking up here but there I think it may be hellish for the citizens. Who can help them? Is difficult. If calamity comes in plague or bugs or rats then the people suffer, but dictators will not let them escape. I make calls every day.

► Moor (Guild)
Replied on August 22nd, Y1:
I’m going to reach out to you by direct message, Fishmon. Tell me what you can.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … 107, 108, 109 … 268, 269, 270

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♦ Joined Group Conversation: Cap, Heart_Shaped_Pupil, of5, Mangled_Wings:

Cap: I don’t know that much

Mangled_Wings: You know some. You were a corporate hero.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Share. Don’t be shy. 😉

Cap: I was a man on the ground in a flashy costume. I was told to do things and I did them. my mental energy went toward figuring out what I would do when I had discretion.
Cap: Some of it.

of5: I know what you mean about mental energy.

Cap: right? time management is a nightmare even without complications. add family, team drama, having to look good for the cameras and magazines and I wasn’t exactly thinking about upper management. I listened to the boss and I winked at the intern with the cute butt sometimes.
Cap: I didn’t dwell on the ins and outs. so if you want me to supply info on the ins and outs of how the corporate capes work as a business, I can’t. I don’t even want to dwell on it. those were bad times for me. there’s a reason I left it behind.

Mangled_Wings: I hope you can share what you do know at some point.

Cap: Of course.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Spending a lot of mental energy lately, R?

of5: I might have to go to ground. I may not be able to travel to the next town to use library hookup until our next meeting. I have some indications that some people are after me. More than they were the day before yesterday.

Cap: do you need me to come? My brother and I can visit, hang out, offer you some backup. I might not remember much about the nuances of the corp team, but I have pride in my ability in a scrap

of5: I appreciate that.

Cap: it could be fun. you’re the closest thing I have to a best friend atm, so we might as well hang at some point.

of5: Oof. Yes. We get along best, out of the group. It would be good in other times, maybe. But I don’t know what vectors they can use to attack or track me. This whole thing is a mess.

Cap: I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with the cluster-trigger clusterfuck

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Amen.

Mangled_Wings: Agreed.

of5: Easiest if I just drop off the radar for a bit. We can touch base later. I might check in to see if S showed and we can go from there. Otherwise I see you in a few days.

Cap: help is available if you need it.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i was going to say. i’d ♥love♥ to be of help

of5: I’m safe where I am for now. in a sense.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: With family?

of5: Mostly. Obviously not when I’m here. Hard to strike a balance. It’s not good times.

Mangled_Wings: My sympathies.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: !

of5: I… really appreciate that, a.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: !!

Curious_Cephalopod: please, K. Let it be.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Ok. 🙂

Cap: C. good to see you stepping out of the shadows.
Cap: I wondered if you would speak up

Curious_Cephalopod: the shadows are where it’s comfortable and safe.

Mangled_Wings: The shadows are where the real monsters lurk

Curious_Cephalopod: that too, A…
Curious_Cephalopod: …that too.

Cap: why are you curious, out of curiosity?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Doing research?

Curious_Cephalopod: curious in the british sense…
Curious_Cephalopod: …odd, quirky, eccentric…
Curious_Cephalopod: …I was doing research, as a matter of fact.

Mangled_Wings: On?

Curious_Cephalopod: figuring out the landscape. looking at maps. where we want to set up.

Cap: and?

Curious_Cephalopod: and it feels like the A-listers are busy. everyone else is in the shadows…
Curious_Cephalopod: …waiting for someone else to break the peace and take the hate when they get blamed…
Curious_Cephalopod: …the problem is we’re so geographically spread out. even if we discount R.

of5: I’m aiming to move into the city. There are complications

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: your friend

of5: a lot of things.

Curious_Cephalopod: the megalopolis makes for bad logistics.

Cap: I do hope you’ll step out of those shadows more, c.
Cap: it’s been interesting talking to you online and seeing how talkative you are here.
Cap: I like what you contribute when you speak up

Curious_Cephalopod: that’s me being an introvert.

Cap: that’s fixable

Curious_Cephalopod: I think you badly underestimate my introversion, T…

of5: Okay, hold on.

Cap: holding on

Curious_Cephalopod: [error]!
Curious_Cephalopod: [error]!
Curious_Cephalopod: [error]!

You have disconnected from chat
You have reconnected to chat

of5: As the person who knows capricorn best, I’m going to step in and say this convo should end. It’s going to end in hurt feelings.

Curious_Cephalopod: my feelings are fine.

of5: Ok

Cap: I’m fine.

of5: Let’s end the convo here. We’re here to back each other up. Let’s be more cautious than not.

Cap: sure. I’m annoyed but I can take a break.
Cap has left the conversation.

of5: I hope I didn’t make things awkward.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It’s fine. Made sense.

Curious_Cephalopod: balances to be struck

of5: Yeah

⊙

♦ Private message from Heart_Shaped_Pupil

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: She said something nice!

Curious_Cephalopod: ?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: A!

Curious_Cephalopod: Ah.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Good things good feelings. I’m psyched because this all feels positive.

Curious_Cephalopod: maybe

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: On the topic of positivity…

Curious_Cephalopod: ? Did you disconnect?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: So I was thinking we should meet in the city. You were talking about logistics and I was thinking about where eveyrone was. you’re closest to me and we’re the same age I think? So I was thinking we could meet and talk strategy over fast food. We could even do something after and build team bonds and things like that. Maybe a movie or arcade. Whatever you want to do.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: No pressure.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Sorry. I wrote and rewrote that three times

Curious_Cephalopod: You mean a date?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I didn’t say a date.

Curious_Cephalopod: But you mean a date.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Maybe. Sure. Springtime of youth and all that pizazz.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Or pre-springtime. Tweentime of spring? The thawing of the slush doesn’t have the same conotations

Curious_Cephalopod: I think there are about a hundred different reasons why I should say no to that. actually…
Curious_Cephalopod: …make that two hundred. I legitimately think I could name two hundred reasons why that’s a terrible idea.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Really? Two hundred?

Curious_Cephalopod: The more I think of it, the more reasons I come up with…
Curious_Cephalopod: …no, K.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Can I ask why?

Curious_Cephalopod: because you’re you and I’m me…
Curious_Cephalopod: …no and don’t ask again.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Ok. 🙂
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Can I ask another question?

Curious_Cephalopod: will I regret saying yes?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: When you were talking to Ms. Sydney earlier
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: You hinted at having a reason for the changing nicks.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: What was it?

Curious_Cephalopod: Honestly?…
Curious_Cephalopod: …I wanted to see if you’d get curious enough to reveal yourself.

Welcome to the Parahumans Online message boards.
You are currently logged in, Heart_Shaped_Pupil
You are viewing:
• Private message conversations with new replies
• Ordered chronologically
Note: With your current settings, you may find your homepage to be rather sparse! Consider re-enabling default settings, selecting some general categories, people, teams, locations or topics to follow, or refine terms to review threads you’ve visited in the past.

⊙

Connecting to “gChat.ParahumansOnline.Treefort_Lookout(6667)” (Attempt 20)
Resolving Host Name
Connecting…
Connected.
Using identity “Heart_Shaped_Pupil”
Welcome to the Treefort_Lookout! A hangout for those 16 and under with inquisitive minds and an eye on the goings on around them. Keep conversation focused on sharing info. Other discussion belongs in our Pillowfort_Lazytalk or Snowfort_Mission rooms.

Maxtag: Hi Kenzie
Toxicfish216: Heya. Wanting to get right to business?
Thistlesoup: *hugs* Hi love

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: *hugs back* Hi thistle, hi max, hi tox.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: no rush on business. i’m starting my day

My_Own_Gren: Hi K. We were talking about stuff just now. There’s a bit to catch up on.
Dogtooth: Heya, optics. Good to see you.
Magnep: hi kenzie. what’s up?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: hi Peter, hi Megan, hi nep
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: not much is up
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: how are you guys? does anyone need help with anything?

Asnag: I don’t think so. We were talking about your stuff, actually.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: neat. i’m getting breakfast so i’ll be a second before I’m settled

Tockta: How are you doing? You said you were feeling down in Pillowfort last night.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i’m better
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i’m ready to start the day. i’m excited at the idea of getting info.

Thistlesoup: That’s good to hear. 🙂
Milldross: You wanted us to nag you about your punctuation and capitals. Your friend got irritated about it.
Flying_Kevin: this is the girl that was the Ward, right?
Flying_Kevin: I’m new btw

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I did. Thank you mill.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I did. I just woke up.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I am. Hi Kevin.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: *rubs hands together* get me started.

Johnsonjar: Hi K. 🙂 You wanted us to keep an eye out for your old teammates.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: !
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: who? where?

Johnsonjar: We found two of them. One second.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: !! Who?

Johnsonjar: Aven and Houndstooth

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Thank you! Good job! You’re awesome!
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Ima go talk to Aven first.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Away

You have marked yourself as away.

⊙

♦ Private message sent to AvenG

AvenG: ?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hi Aven. It’s Kenzie

AvenG: Oh. Kenzie M?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: That me.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m not supposed to be sharing out my name and tying it to this account but I figure in this context it’s okay. You’ve seen my face, you know my name, you know my powers, I trust you.

AvenG: Yeah.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I don’t want to be a pest. I just wanted to say hi and say I’m glad you’re alive. I always thought you were cool.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: and if you ever want to talk or meet or whatever, you know where I’m at and you can send me a message.

AvenG: Ok.
AvenG: No offense, but I probably won’t.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: ok.

AvenG: Sorry. I’m trying to get a fresh start, the Wards were pretty good times but that was then. You and I didn’t talk then, with the age difference, so it’s strange to talk now.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It’s okay. You were frontline and I was backline. You were a teenager, I was the brat.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: There are lots of reasons I’m sure but ‘no’ is the only one that matters. I wish you the best. 🙂

AvenG: thank you. Good luck with whatever you end up doing, Kenzie.

⊙

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /back

You have marked yourself as back
Welcome back to the Treefort_Lookout!

Tockta: How did it go?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Not great. She didn’t want to talk.

Tockta: Aw. 🙁
Thistlesoup: *hugs*

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: *hugs back*

Maxtag: We’ve got your back.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m going to talk to the next one. Wish me luck!
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Away

You have marked yourself as away.

Doones: Good luck!

⊙

♦ Private message sent to Houndstooth

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hi H.T.

Houndstooth: Hi Kenzie.
Houndstooth: I’m in the middle of a conversation with Ave. She said you reached out.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m keeping an eye out for my old teammates.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m glad you’re alive, houndstooth.

Houndstooth: I’m glad you’re alive too, Kenzie.
Houndstooth: What are you up to these days?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m looking at joining a team. Kind of. We’re still figuring a lot out. It’s exciting. they’re neat.

Houndstooth: That’s really good to hear
Houndstooth: I’ve talked to some of the others offline. We made out better than most. The only question mark is 10-59, but I’m suspicious they’re okay.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I already found them. they’re alive and well.

Houndstooth: Did you? ok. good. great. Then we only lost Pigeonhole, but you knew about them. We made out better than most.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: it’s great. I’m so relieved.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I really liked the team. Everyone was so cool.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It was an important time for me. Coming back to Baltimore to join the team was the first time I got to stop and settle down.

Houndstooth: Yeah

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It was home
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: so it means alot to me to hear you say **we** when talking about us making it out mostly okay.

Houndstooth: You know that was then, don’t you?
Houndstooth: Back in the past. Things have changed.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: uh huh

Houndstooth: You got a bad deal, Kenzie. Not the worst I’ve seen but I’ve seen a lot of people get better hands than what you got. You tried as hard as anyone and you did really good work.
Houndstooth: You were a better hero when you were four and a half feet tall than some adult capes I know today

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’ve heard this speech before H.T.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: variants of it
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: you gave me a version of it once
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: you don’t have to let me down easy. I’m tough. 🙂
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: just cut to the chase. 😉

Houndstooth: I think you shouldn’t contact the others.
Houndstooth: They have their own things to work through. They’re rebuilding. Everyone’s looking forward.
Houndstooth: You have a new team. That’s great.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: huh. was i really that bad?

Houndstooth: You weren’t bad okay?
Houndstooth: You weren’t bad.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: but?

Houndstooth: But…
Houndstooth: give me a second to type.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: HT… i was ten
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: iv’e grown up some
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i was there for the end of the world
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i did stuff. i actually really helped

Houndstooth: Absolutely
Houndstooth: I keep typing responses and deleting them
Houndstooth: People are gunshy

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: gunshy?
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: of me?

Houndstooth: Shit. Now I feel bad.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Don’t
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: i’m disappointed is all

Houndstooth: I can’t stress enough that I have a lot of respect for you.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: thank you 🙂
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: can you give me one shot then?
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: not even as friends. it can be business. I’m useful. you’ve been prasing my work ethic. I’m smart. I have a kind of team. If you do me the favor of giving me a shot I can do you one favor for free.

Houndstooth: I don’t know

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: you’re a smart guy and you were a good leader. you know how these things work. you know my power has its uses. others would kidnap me for it. I am offering myself to you and you would be stupid to turn me down. use me. please.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: if you respect me so much then let me prove myself

Houndstooth: Okay.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Yes?

Houndstooth: Sure. Absolutely.
Houndstooth: I can contact you here?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: yes

Houndstooth: I will be in touch.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: ok

Houndstooth: I will also talk to the others. I will leave your contact info with them. If they are comfortable with it they can reach out to you.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: got it
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’ll cross my fingers.

Houndstooth: I have to run.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: thanks for making the time to talk to me

Houndstooth: Keep up the good work. Bye.

⊙

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /back

You have marked yourself as back
Welcome back to the Treefort_Lookout!

Tockta: How did it go? Is your day looking up?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: The high point of the conversation was toward the end when he said don’t call us we’ll call you.

Tockta: I don’t understand
Flying_Kevin: ?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It doesn’t matter. I’m choosing to view this in a positive light. My day has to get better from here.

Tockta: That’s positive.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It is!
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: For now I need a distraction.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Any other news?

Maxtag: Tattletale took on a new mission that’s taking her to Earth N. She’ll be busy for a short while.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: !
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Priorities!

Maxtag: I didn’t know it was important.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It is. Information about my new teammates is key.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: be right back.

Thistlesoup: Bye!

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Away

You have marked yourself as away.

⊙

♦ Joined Group Conversation: Cap, Mangled_Wings (away), Weird_Cephalopod

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: was R around?

Weird_Cephalopod has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Bye C.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Rawr. K is here. everyone run away! >:3

Cap: R left. he dropped off the grid

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Arrrg

Cap: C was saying he had to go get lunch soon.
Cap: I think that’s why he left
Cap: A is eating too. she practically living at library now I think.
Cap: but she has to leave it to eat.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: ok
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: it’s good that she’s there. good to learn and study.

Cap: why?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Tattletale is out of town. They probbaly won’t attack without her around to act. There is a repreive. I got some info on her late last night too

Cap: that’s great. hopefully he swings by the library and we can let him know.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: great

Cap: is quiet today. lazy sunday. how are you doing?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: today has been interesting. i’m looking forward to S getting here and to the next meet.

Cap: agreed on the first two parts. partial agree on the last. I think we’re going to get yelled at

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I can not imagine that.

Cap: shoot. would love to chat but am being asked to go to church.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: at noon?

Cap: family is asking. church gets overcrowded these days so we attend during certain blocks of time.
Cap: you and me. we talk later, yeah?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: for sure.

Cap: good work on the tattletale info. strategy will be so key if R ends up in trouble. you a champ.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: not a problem

Cap: sorry to duck and run

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: go, you dork! it’s ok 🙂

Cap has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /twiddle thumbs

twiddle thumbs: Unknown Command

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Yeah

You have left the conversation.

⊙

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /back

You have marked yourself as back
Welcome back to the Treefort_Lookout!

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hit me with some more of that business

Maxtag: Hi Kenzie
Maxtag: You said teammate related things were important.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Yes. You have more?

Maxtag: I’m not sure. It’s minor but you said it was related to two of your teammates.
Maxtag: Weld is back. Article here.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Oh. He was away? The people I’d tell about it are away for lunch.

Maxtag: I don’t follow.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It’s okay.

You currently have one alert about possible admin action. Please click to review and open a conversation with a site administrator about conduct issues.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hahahahaha XD

Doones: What’s so funny?
Magnep: ? 🙂
Flying_Kevin: I don’t understand.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Today has been quite a day. I’m having a run of bad luck. Admins want to talk to me and I think I know why. Haha.

Doones: Good luck!

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: can I get a bit of a hug, Thistle?

Thistlesoup: *hugs*

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: You’re the best.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Away

You have marked yourself as away.

⊙

♦ Private Conversation with Shower (Admin):
Please note that conversations with site administrators may be recorded and reviewed.

Shower: I’d like a moment if you can spare it.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hello.

Shower: Thank you for the prompt response. I’m Graham. I’m with the PHO IT team. You can call me by my name or just ‘shower’.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hi Shower. What can I do for you?

Shower: We had some unusual search activity that seemed to be causing congestion. Would you happen to know anything about this?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I might. It would have been during off-peak hours though.

Shower: We update infrastructure during off-peak hours. it slowed us down. It stalled us for three hours last night.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: oh that’s not good.

Shower: You’re piggybacking off of our servers?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I was trying to help. We’ve been updating the wikis as much as we can and three-fifths of the work is gathering data that’s helpful to others.

Shower: We?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: It was a stupid hobby project. I was thinking of what everyone wanted the most and information seemed most critical. I had some guys I knew from way before and I thought I’d get everyone up to date and on the same page.

Shower: We often encourage hobby projects on PHO, though we cannot when resources are as tight as they are, and it would depend on scale and the amount of mess created. How easy is this to dismantle, and do I need to talk to anyone else?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Nobody else. It was me alone. I can fix it right now.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: How bad of a problem is this? Is there any leeway?

Shower: It’s interfering with others’ ability to access things. It might not seem like a problem here, because you’re close to the home node, but there are people on the periphery or far-flung regions and they’re going from satellite to ground to satellite to here, across several Earths.
Shower: I think it’s best if you clean up as much of it as you can.

Shower: I think that since you’re a chat member in good standing, we’d be willing to let this slide with a warning if it can be promptly dealt with without any mess.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’ll have to reboot.

Shower: I’ll talk to you shortly.

You have left the conversation.

⊙

Connecting to “gChat.ParahumansOnline.Treefort_Lookout(6667)” (Attempt 32)
Resolving Host Name
Connecting…
Connected.
Using identity “Heart_Shaped_Pupil”
Welcome to the Treefort_Lookout! A hangout for those 16 and under with inquisitive minds and an eye on the goings on around them. Keep conversation focused on sharing info. Other discussion belongs in our Pillowfort_Lazytalk or Snowfort_Mission rooms.

Toxicfish216: Heya. Wanting to get right to business?
Maxtag: Hi Kenzie
Thistlesoup: *hugs* Hi love
My_Own_Gren: Hi K. We were talking about stuff while you were disconnected. There’s only a little to catch up on.
Dogtooth: Heya, optics.
Magnep: hi kenzie. how are you this afternoon?
Tockta: How are you doing? You sounded positive the last time I asked.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: yeah
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: right to business

Johnsonjar: What do you need?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I need everyone to be quiet.

You have been auto-set to away as you have been idle for five minutes

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill Toxicfish216

You are no longer set to away

Toxicfish216: BusinessOrPleasureBot disconnecting…
Toxicfish has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill Maxtag

Maxtag: MissionBot1 disconnecting…
Maxtag has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill JohnsonJar

JohnsonJar: MissionBot2 disconnecting…
Johnsonjar has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill My_Own_Gren

My_Own_Gren: NewsAmountBot disconnecting…
My_Own_Gren has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill Dogtooth

Dogtooth: HTBot disconnecting…
Dogtooth has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill Magnep

Magnep: CasualConvoBot disconnecting…
Magnep has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill Flying_Kevin

FlyingKevin: InstantNewGuyBot disconnecting…
FlyingKevin has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /Kill TMI_Mom

TMI_Mom: DelayedNewGuyBot disconnecting…
TMI_Mom has left the conversation

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Thistle, can I ask for something?

Thistlesoup: You don’t even need to ask, love
Shower (Admin) has joined the conversation.
Thistlesoup: *Big Hugs*
Shower: I thought you might be dealing with the problem. Or is it dealt with?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Haha. This is embarassing.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m dealing.

Thistlesoup: Do you want another?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Be quiet thistle.

Shower: Are they A.I.?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Haha. No. They’re as dumb as dog farts.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Trigger phrases or phrases a set time after login. Different bots for different tasks. I’ve taken care of some of the most problematic. I’ll clean up the ones that are here for appearances.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I wanted to see if I could make them just realistic enough to fool anyone who accidentally stumbled in.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /kill thistlesoup

Thistlesoup: HugBot disconnecting…
Thistlesoup has left the conversation
Shower: I see.
Shower: I don’t know if I was here long enough to be fooled, but I’m definitely confused.
Shower: You’re sure they’re not AI?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: If they were A.I. I could be a potential S-class threat.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m just really lame
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: it’s hobby programming. Not my focus or specialty.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: /kill Doones

Doones: LuckBot disconnecting…
Doones has left the conversation
Shower: I’ll leave you to it, unless there’s something I can help you with?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I built a server to manage any CPU load from the more complicated search bots. Can I donate it or something?

Shower: You built a server?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I emulated what you guys run and set it up intermediary.

Shower: I don’t even think that’s possible. But it might explain some of the other things we’ve had go wrong, actually. No, we’ll need you to shut it down.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: You can have it. It’s probably better than what you have.

Shower: Absolutely not. The security issues with that would be horrendous. It would allow snooping, spoofing- no. Take it down ASAP

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: ASAP. Got it

Shower: We’ll talk before the day is out. I need to make sure we have a handle on everything involved here.
Shower has left the conversation.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: okay then.

You have been auto-set to away as you have been idle for five minutes

Executioner404 has joined the conversation.

Executioner404: /Kill Goatfish
Goatfish: WIP_Capbot is disconnecting…
Goatfish has left the conversation.
Executioner404: /kill Shameful_Manatee
Shameful_Manatee: WIP_Chrisbot is disconnecting…
Shameful_Manatee has left the conversation.

You have set the topic to: “.”

Executioner404: /kill AvianB

You have set the room name to “Chat114”
You have cleared the chat logs.
You have left the conversation.

⊙

♦ Private message from Mangled_Wings

Mangled_Wings: I have a question. Are you busy?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: staring at a blank screen.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: What’s the question?

Mangled_Wings: I’ve been called Queen Dark twice and King Dark once.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: oh

Mangled_Wings: What does it mean? there are no dictionary websites that explain. I searched and I keep seeing the same paragraph.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: The paragraph is a paste. Queen Dark is a mean joke.

Mangled_Wings: they mock me?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’m sorry.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: You’ve gone quiet. You shouldn’t reply to them, you know.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: You’re still quiet. I don’t think the internet suits you, A.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I think you are beautiful and stunning and terrifying in person. In a good way, I think. Because you and I are on the same side.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Your voice doesn’t translate well.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I think you’re intimidating and you want to be intimidating on the internet and that doesn’t work at all. C is the intimidating one here. Somehow. He has that knack. That atmosphere. The skill.

Mangled_Wings: C is?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Funny, isn’t it?

Mangled_Wings: I think I hate the internet to the very center of my being.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: If you think about it, with powers and all, the center of your being could include the vast monster in another dimension that’s all hooked up into you. Passenger stuff. The center of mass could be in the middle of an alien god monster the size of a mountain or moon. I imagine it has the energy of a small star stored in it.

Mangled_Wings: This serves to illustrate the depth and energy of my hate for a setting where C might be more intimidating than I am.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I think I might agree with you on the hate thing. I want to meet face to face and hang out with S and you and maybe C and definitely Cap and R. I want that to work out.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: If that fails, I dunno.

Mangled_Wings: You don’t know?
Mangled_Wings: I thought we had a deal.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I wasn’t sure if you were being serious.

Mangled_Wings: I am always serious.
Mangled_Wings: We’ll handle this project. I aim to learn all I can. When or if it falls through, I will be an independent villain again. I aim to be a successful one.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Yeah.

Mangled_Wings: You’ll work for me. I’ll pay you, of course.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Hm.

Mangled_Wings: What?

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: people run scared from me. it seems even non-people run from me, if I pay attention to what happened in the last hour.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: you aren’t running

Mangled_Wings: I don’t scare.
Mangled_Wings: The world is filled with blithering idiots. More are only blither and more are silent idiots. You’re the exception. If you will work for me then I’ll damn well make good use of you. I’ll incentivize you to stay around.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: okay.
Heart_Shaped_Pupil: you’re one of the cooler people I know, you know?

Mangled_Wings: See? Not a blithering idiot.

Subject: PHO Technical Assistance
August 24th, Y1
After discussion among the moderation team, we have agreed to allow the name change. As we discussed in the tech help chat, our primary concern in these situations is an abuse of the system or a lack of accountability. This being said, your account is in good standing and you’ve agreed to a probationary status.

Your in-account email, curated lists, private messages, badges, and accesses will remain intact, as will your forum account’s connection to your wiki contributions.

Let us know if there is anything else we can help you with.
Graham at PHO

Subject: Re: PHO Technical Assistance
August 24th, Y1
Thank you so much! I am having another problem. I’ve been getting caught up on my PMs/DMs/Emails and there is a lot of abusive content. All of the recent messages are very hostile or vulgar. It seems to have started before I even signed back on. I don’t know why. I’m so sorry to raise problems when I’m probationary.

Subject: Re: Re: PHO Technical Assistance
August 24th, Y1
Graham here. I looked at the incident log and found one major incident that another site admin handled. An article came out here. Two groups online identified the people in that article and shared out their screen names and other information. We took action when people used PHO resources (direct messages, email) to harass one of the individuals in the article. We took action and removed them, but they may be returning with the use of new accounts and expanding the number of people targeted.

If you could report any or all of those involved, it would help us a great deal. For solutions, I can think of three options: you can continue to report so we can continue to take action (as these are not the people we want on PHO) and we can hope this quiets down, you can move to a new account and start fresh, or you can agree to give PHO staff access to your private messages so we can take action. This would involve us reading anything private in the conversations, and it would mean anyone messaging you was notified that PHO staff can read your things. We would limit this to only recent and new senders, so your friends and pre-existnig conversation partners would stay private. As a bonus the notification could help stem the influx.
-Graham with PHO

Subject: Re: re: re: PHO Technical Assistance
August 24th, Y1
I’m not comfortable giving you access as I might receive sensitive or personal messages (and I would want to). I’ll report what I can.

⊙

Welcome to the Parahumans Online message boards.
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♦ Private message from AnonymousEDT103:

AnonymousEDT103: you’re not one of us and you’ll never be
User has been reported. We’ll look into it soon. Thank you!

⊙

♦ Topic: [Article] Weld to Warden
In: Boards ► News ► Events ►Gimel.US
Ball-Chan
Posted on August 23rd Y1:

[Article Text, Editorial]His list of credentials starts off good. A two year tenure as a member of the Boston Wards with no offenses or misconduct reported to the media. He was the third monstrous cape to feature as an actor on a television show, the first to make a second appearance on TV, and the first monstrous cape with an onscreen kiss. He was the subject of a viral online image, released with various humorous captions, and it was a combination of this and arguably his small-network television appearances that gave him his popularity. He rode this success to a position as the first monstrous cape to be the team leader of the Wards. Ambitious fellow, isn’t he?

Weld’s popularity and time in the spotlight made him a figure of interest when, following undisclosed events in Brockton Bay, he turned from the established heroes and brought the vast majority of the monstrous capes in the Protectorate and Wards with him. Speculation flew as to why, and Weld was cagey when asked. No comment, the teenager said.

Weld’s team was dubbed ‘The Irregulars’ in a play on the term for unconventional military squadrons and on the team being wholly made up of monstrous capes. At this stage, it was still possible to praise Weld for his efforts. He reached out to monstrous parahumans both American and international, and he kept his team together while carrying out deeds for the camera. Maintaining a group of such size isn’t an easy task when its numbers are swelling like his group’s did. He wasn’t too open about his methods or his team’s motivations.

Things take an ugly turn from here. When Chevalier announced that the PRT was mending its ways and that the person at the heart of the organization’s corruption had been defeated, Weld’s irregular team of monstrous capes kept away and kept silent. Heroes called for unity, the Suits answered that call, sending many members to America to serve, following a schism of their own.

Even the defeat of Behemoth or the appearance of the new Endbringers didn’t serve to bring Weld back into the fold. If anything, Weld seemed to note that his team’s numbers were dropping. He and the monstrous capes serving under him stopped making as many public appearances. We don’t know what he started doing at this time, but his team was still recruiting. No comment, Weld said.

It’s telling, too, that Weld’s appearance changed. He decorated himself with horns and scales. To those with an eye for the symbolic, Weld was a monstrous cape who was embracing the monster and turning his back on the cape side of things.

More time passed, and more silence followed. No comment, he said, on the rare occasions when he appeared in front of the cameras. No comment.

On that Thursday, June 20th, 2013, Scion took our world from us. He took almost everything from us. Based on our limited accounts of what happened, Weld was there for the initial foray, an organized series of attacks mounted from an oil rig. He was not there after, leading a substantial portion of his team to other venues. There’s no indication of what he was doing, but we do know he wasn’t there for the skirmishes on other worlds, against other major organized groups of parahumans. We do know he wasn’t there for the follow-up confrontation on the beachhead.

Many will argue it was a chaotic time. No reports are wholly accurate, the world was ending, and the number of parahumans fighting was no doubt mind-boggling. Why make a point of this in particular?

To start with, today was the day Weld returned to Gimel after some time elsewhere. We’ve been told he was doing a combination of work in Earth Bet and spending some time touring other worlds in the company of the mass-murderer codenamed ‘Garotte’ and a pair of unnamed capes the two were friendly with. He was extended an offer to join the Wardens as a leader of one of the group’s cells, and he accepted.

People are applauding, it seems. Weld led a rather formidable team of monstrous capes away from the field of battle, at that critical point in our recent history. He came back practically alone, his team gone. He’s tight-lipped as to why.

His Wards team didn’t do very well either, for the record. We haven’t heard the full story from him there either. He claimed that he didn’t want to disparage his former employer, and that they were still on positive terms.

Does he deserve the position?
Is he trustworthy?
Is he even that good of a cape or a leader?

I’ll remind you of two of his favorite words, while you mull over those questions.

“No comment.”

(Showing Page 13 of 13)

► Wytchmlj
Replied on August 23rd, Y1:
Nobody is saying why things happened like they did. Some are hinting @ it tho.
A lot are hinting at it. Conspiracy of silence.
Weld seems to know things and like the article says he’s keeping his mouth shut.
It is his right to keep quiet. It is our right to say he’s an asshole for doing it.

► Capricorn (Hero)
Replied on August 23rd
Guys guys guys. this is a hit piece and it’s a bad one at that.

Full disclosure: I know Weld some. he was and is one of my favorite people

But come the fuck on. Everyone has a motivation driving them. skimming through the comments on this article makes that v. clear. YES absolutely wonder at weld’s motivations. wonder about everyone’s. wonder about the people who are pushing hard for moving forward and about the people who want to go back to the way things were. wonder about the person who wrote this article and why he has the focus he does.

but don’t make the mistake of focusing so much on the question marks that you forget about the other punctuation marks & if someone shows you who they are then believe them. Weld’s teammates in Boston and Brockton Bay only had nice things to say about him. Period. Weld did charity work with kids he definitely didn’t have to do. Period. Weld served as team leader for a city in need and he kept his wards alive thru the Slaughterhouse Nine and God knows what else- exclamation mark.

Weld has never shown himself to be anything but decent. if you’re filling in the blanks or raising questions then take your cue from that first & foremost.

► Tdren
Replied on August 23rd
Silence isn’t an option. Things are heating up, people are scared and we’re scared for a justifiable reason. Powers came out, and we started seeing broken powers. People with mutations, people with no off switch. Monsters who needed to be quarantined. Endbringers.

Now we’ve got a different kind of broken power.

It keeps getting worse. It gets worse in a linear and steady way. These things follow from one another. There is a visible pattern and there is a sense to be made of things. The new broken powers follow from the people made monstrous by their powers. If Weld knows something we have to ask.

We have no authorities. We have no system of government. We have no national cape team or licensed heroes. We can’t even agree on a name for Gimel’s megalopolis!

We can discuss all day but at some point we need to make decisions. We need to say we deserve to know and if you won’t tell us then no you can’t represent us and no we won’t trust you to have our back.

► FFlash
Replied on August 23rd
@ Capricorn – I think you have some bias you’re not admitting to here. You disappeared too, didn’t you? You left Reach and disappeared. A couple of your old teammates are saying they’re thinking about joining the Attendant and you’re not included in that. Why? Are we supposed to use your metrics to evaluate you? Go by the face you presented to the public?

I think I’d rather read between the lines. Your old team doesn’t want you for a reason

► AtoLo
Replied on August 23rd
1000000000s of human beings died or have yet to make their way to us.

1000000000s.

1000000000s of humans with families. mothers and fathers. good days and bad days.

i say 1000000000s instead of billions because billions barely sounds different from millions and i think the zeroes drive it home

the city is as big as it is because we were lucky. we only lost about half of those close to us in N.E. US.

refugees of Earth Shin say a parahuman took over their Earth a decade ago. one woman. she went back home to continue ruling them.

there is a world not far from us which is at constant war. there are tears in reality they can use to reach us and they have a lot of incentive to do so. they have parahumans too.

there is a theocratic state which is more distant but they have some parahumans too.

there is a world of monsters like Weld and his irregulars.

there are others, smaller. there are probably others who we haven’t been told about.

every week we get a handful of reports of people triggering with broken powers. They burn bright and burn fast and they do a lot of damage.

on the smallest level we are quiet and still because we are afraid to disturb the peace. but on the big level our new neighbors aren’t focused 100% on us. we’re important. we’re a powerful few even though we lost 1000000000s. the tyrant queen is looking at us but also watching over her shoulder for the war world and the monsters and the broken triggers. the war world is wanting to venture out but maybe an expedition is hard to field and they get broken triggers too. they’re getting more regular triggers.

the truce will break, both on the small level and the big

we are hurting from the loss of 1,000,000,000s and we are only just now reaching the point where we need to make decisions. what do we call ourselves? what direction do we go? Do we move forward or backward?

Like i said we are smaller in number than we should be. we’re hurting. we’re distracted and scattered.

but i think we have the most powers at our disposal. that’s important.

and i think we’re best equipped to have the answers when others come asking. i think that’s the most important thing by far. they are going to ask and we are going to want to have answers to offer them

i think we need people to start telling instead of hinting. information is the most valuable resource at all.

► Yipper
Replied on August 23rd
Information is also more volatile than oil, nitro, or nuclear material. Look at the secret identity leaks going on in this thread. Targeted harassment of Weld & others. If hundreds or thousands agree to keep quiet about things then maybe there’s a reason.

Let’s not turn into a rabid mob

► Space_Squid
Replied on August 23rd
Humanity has seen its worst test yet and it came out the other side.

I’d like to draw a comparison. I’ve read some of these pages and I see an effort to make us out to be the enemy. the monstrous capes are this mysterious thing and some of us are made out to know things that we aren’t saying

I can tell you who we are. just like you we’re scarred. we were hurt very badly and altered very dramatically and we didn’t get to know why. we desperately wanted answers because our histories friends and families were taken from us. we were forced out of our homes and thrust into a strange place and many of us were left desperate or dangerous. Just like some of you.

We learned some partial truths and that made things worse. Then after a very long time and a lot of pain we learned most of the rest of the truth.

I won’t pretend its easy. I struggled every day and then I struggled more after the end of the world.

But we fought a hard fight whether it was to save the world or to get to safety or to climb out of dark angry depths. We came out the other side. Every day we survive is a day we can say “I was THAT strong so I can definitely survive this.” Replace I with WE because we are all together in this.

I don’t know if that will work for you but it helped me

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … 11, 12, 13

⊙

♦ Topic: help
In: Boards ► Groups ► C53
Casey_F08
Posted on August 23rd Y1:

I would like to thank you all for reading this. I was invited to post here by Quasi after I posted in some other places. Quasi has been talking to me and resurring me.

I remember hearing about the monster heroes and I never payed much attention to them. Now I think I am one.

My name is Casey Forks and I would be starting high school this fall if things hadn’t gone bad. My mom hasn’t been well for a long time and my brother has the same condition so we decided to stick it out and whether things. we had a shelter and we had some food. my dad and I went to stores and raided them for more foods that would last and we stocked up.

The shelter didn’t work out. we all got headaches and dad said the air filters weren’t sufficent. we went upstairs into the house and sealed all the gaps and dad tried to fix up the filters. long story short that didn’t work out either. I should have tried to get somewhere safe but I stayed. I shouldn’t have stayed.

I didn’t think enough about monster capes or about those with powers but now I am both. Maybe I am not Casey anymore. I am frozen like the dead people who have lying on the ground for the years since the world ended, like a mummy without bandages. Mold grows on me and grows around me and it covers everything I can see and think about. I am a god of death and decay and I am an open fridge door with mold growing inside it and spilling out. with every passing day and hour and minute I am less like casesy and more a god of gross fridge stuff. my world of mold gets bigger every moment

I grew mold on my dads body and I could make him move. I grew mold on his brain and I got him to think and with his thinking I finally got the generator and the router and the phones working. It helped that I grew mold on the pieces and parts.

Now I am making my sister type because I cannot move any part of me a milimeter and I am asking heroes for help. I’m internet famous and there are articles written about my situation so that gives me some hope

But more importantly I am trying not to lose my mind. Quasi is helping me with that and he said you would all help by sharing your stories.

I am so scared that the heroes won’t save me but I am just as scared they’ll save me but they won’t be able to fix me. I am scared that I won’t be able to move. I am scared I won’t be able to hug a pretty girl or lie next to her in bed. I never cared about the rude stuff that much I thought that the cuddling would be the nicest part. I want to see the world through eyes that aren’t moldy and to take a deep breath and scream or even laugh. I want to play soccer again with all my friends there and I want my parents to be there and be proud.

Tell me I’ll be ok.

(Showing Page 3 of 3)

► Casey_F08
Replied on August 23rd, Y1
Thank you thank you for your words. they give me hope.

►Engel
Replied on August 23rd, Y1
Be strong brother. With powers all things are possible. Through trauma and struggle we find ourselves so much stronger. It takes time to adjust and it takes time and effort to find the right keys to the right locks. With help (and you have so much help!) Clocks can be turned back and flesh can be reshaped. We killed a god and the worst is behind us. Slowly but surely we will put the pieces back together. If I did not believe this 100% then I would not be here to write this message to you. Be strong.

► Casey_F08
Replied on August 23rd, Y1
I am trying.

► Casey_F08
Replied on August 23rd, Y1
thank you all so much

► Space_Squid
Replied on August 23rd, Y1
I read some of your old posts Casey. when you fractured your ankle playing soccer you were worried you would never play again but you got there. When powers are involved the lows are so much lower but the highs are high enough to make it all so very worth it. You are funny, smart and cool and people wouldn’t be rooting for you if you weren’t. Your fears echo mine when I realized what had happened to me. I worried I would never have control or have a boy next to me or anything else. I can tell you it is possible.

► Fishie (Board Admin)
Replied on August 23rd, Y1
Thread locked. Article with details/wrap-up here.

Casey has been added to the names thread here. We won’t tolerate objections on the matter. He was close enough to being one of us.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3

⊙

♦ Private message from Whippersnap:

Whippersnap: I saw you in the casey thread. you had your name changed but you did a bad job of covering up the change.

Space_Squid: I didn’t cover it up. The old name was a lark at a time I needed to laugh but I’m done with it. Its embarrassing now

Whippersnap: some of us were talking in the chat and we agree you weren’t an ally in the end.

Space_Squid: I see

Whippersnap: Egg was only one to come back from there. he said you and Weld stopped us from getting justice

Space_Squid: the messages I got. They weren’t from angry civilians. They were from you?

Whippersnap: from us.

Space_Squid: okay. no need to worry then. I won’t come back. I wish you all the best.

Whippersnap: fuck you

Space_Squid: You should know I killed her. The one who did this.

Whippersnap: you stopped us from getting our justice and took it for yourself.

Space_Squid: I guess so

You have left the conversation.

⊙

Subject: PHO Technical Assistance
August 24th, Y1
Hi Graham,
Space Squid here.
I hate to be a pain. I’d like to ask if it’s okay if I just deleted my account and started fresh.

⊙

♦ Joined Group Conversation: Cap, Mangled_Wings, Weird_Insect, of5, Heart_Shaped_Pupil

Cap: pisses me off

of5: Its the way it goes. He’s a tough guy. He can roll with it.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: S!

Mangled_Wings: Hi S.

Kraken_in_a_Jar: hi

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: ! ! ! ! ! ! Yes !

Kraken_in_a_Jar: *hugs Kenzie to get her to stop wiggling*

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: *dies*

Weird_Insect: geez K, that’s not funny…
Weird_Insect: …we’re using short-form names btw, S.

Kraken_in_a_Jar: Oh I see. I don’t really see the point but ok

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: sorry

Kraken_in_a_Jar: its ok
Kraken_in_a_Jar: It put a smile on my face K.

of5: here we are. it’s really good to see you, S. Keyboard got?

Kraken_in_a_Jar: I got my fancy keyboard. Everything fine tuned. Saw the worlds. Spent time with my favorite person.

Cap: speaking of

Kraken_in_a_Jar: it’s ok. he’s tough.
Kraken_in_a_Jar: thank you for rooting for him.
Kraken_in_a_Jar: it meant a lot to see your name there.
Kraken_in_a_Jar: I see the anger and the agitation and I think really people are not complaining about what they are complainng about.

Cap: How is Weld doing?

Kraken_in_a_Jar: Hes good. Hard to tell sometimes because he is so strong. Emotionally. He busy but good. New position means a lot even if I can’t go with him.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: You’re with us

Kraken_in_a_Jar: Absolutely

Cap: things are stirring. world is about to shift. we ride the wave.

Weird_Insect: we have work to do first. organization to do. things to figure out.

Cap: (he’s so different online)

of5: don’t start cap.

Kraken_in_a_Jar: did I miss much?

of5: someone put a hit out on me. that’s fun

Kraken_in_a_Jar: !?

of5: It’s no big deal. Nothing is happening just yet. You’ve been gone 5 days?

Kraken_in_a_Jar: 5 days. Weld left to go talk to people and brought me with. we had to wait for keyboard order so we got a boat and permission and went looking. Tried to find my place of birth. no luck but was some of the best days of my life

Cap: I’ll take that as a challenge. see if we can’t top your boat trip.

Kraken_in_a_Jar: you didn’t make any major decisions?

Weird_Insect: No. we wanted to wait for everyone. Cap saw you online and figured it was you. he got ahold of R and I made sure the others stuck around.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I wouldn’t have let them either for the record. you’re one of my favorite people

Kraken_in_a_Jar: Thank you, C. *hugs K*

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: *dies*

Kraken_in_a_Jar: it means a lot to me.

Mangled_Wings: Strength in numbers

Kraken_in_a_Jar: Not in numbers.
Kraken_in_a_Jar: I don’t think so.
Kraken_in_a_Jar: I think its strength in difference. We all stand at different angles and places. See things differently. we can support one another and hold each other up because of that. but we have commonalities. A and me. K and me. K and C. R and B.

Weird_Insect: T&A.

of5: Haha

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: !!!!

Cap: oh my god, C. you can’t go being funny like that. you’re not allowed.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: I’ll PM you to explain, A.

Mangled_Wings: No need. I didn’t think it’s funny.

Weird_Insect: thank you, A…
Weird_Insect: …it was a lame lame joke…
Weird_Insect: …rest of you don’t laugh too much or I am going to quit

Kraken_in_a_Jar: we’re doing this because we work together.

of5: It’s been weird not having you around, s. I think the balance is defintely something we need to keep an eye on

Kraken_in_a_Jar: Balance 100%.
Kraken_in_a_Jar: we represent the lead we want others to follow
Kraken_in_a_Jar: stability

Cap: yeah

Kraken_in_a_Jar: strength

Mangled_Wings: Absolutely.

Kraken_in_a_Jar: cooperation

of5: Yep

Kraken_in_a_Jar: and honesty and good health and kindness and moving forward and all of that junk. I feel really awkward now because people keep saying yes and now there are expectations and I feel like there’s an order to it.

Weird_Insect: all that junk, yes.

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: Don’t feel awkward! no expectations. Well, some. but is good. we should have you be leader for this project and do the speeches.

Kraken_in_a_Jar: I am not a leader. Let me think on the speeches
Kraken_in_a_Jar: and I’m really tired of pulling on these knobs especially after all the travel. I think I’m going to get myself free and find another.

Weird_Insect: nobody say it

Heart_Shaped_Pupil: another knob? ! ! !

Weird_Insect: damn it, K

Kraken_in_a_Jar: He’s definitely not a knob
Kraken_in_a_Jar: I’ll probably see you all online at some point. if I don’t I’ll see you at the next meeting. Soon.

Mangled_Wings: Soon

♦ You have four unread private messages from an Anonymous account. Click here to read.

⊙

♦ Private Messages from Anonymous Sender
Your account settings permit anonymous messages. These messages work like collect calls: review what was sent and accept or decline.

Anonymous [Old Message]: Hi. I think we talked a few times a while ago and I wanted to ask something
Anonymous [Old Message]: I’m not sure if I’m DMing the right person or if I got punctuation wrong. Last time we talked was was years ago when you did the photoshoot.
Anonymous [Old Message]: I feel really lost. I have questions but I don’t know who to ask. I thought of you and I hope I’m not bothering you or getting the wrong person. I really need some advice or perspective
Anonymous [Old Message]: I sent message anonymously so if I’m wrong or if I’m bothering you you can refuse

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: That’s me. I barely remember the photoshoot. That was a busy time for me.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Sorry for late reply. I had work to do for coming semester. If you need advice I can try to give it- I will say that I keep putting myself in a position to give advice and I may not be the best person to give it.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Can you make a regular account and message me? I keep getting notifications because you’re anonymous

⊙

♦ Private Messages from FlippinMad

FlippinMad: Hi.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Hi. How can I help?

FlippinMad: Thank you
FlippinMad: I’ve been thinking about things for a long time and I’ve been digging for info and answers and trying to put it all together. Is hard because people don’t want to talk about things and a lot of people don’t want to talk to me in particular. People get upset

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: The world ended. It’s kind of upsetting

FlippinMad: I know. I know
FlippinMad: you were there?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: We were all there toward the end. Very few exceptions.

FlippinMad: thousands of capes were there and nobody wants to talk about the specifics

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: The answer will come out in time. It may already be out there in places. Communication is limited. Pockets of humanity are spread out and the people who have a say in info getting from city A to city B are probably wanting to keep things peaceful for now. Gov’t or what we have that passes for gov’t, PHO and the 12ish other online bodies…
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: they control info. But they can’t stop word of mouth. Not easily. We will hear the full story one day. I don’t know if it will be a good day but we will hear it.

FlippinMad: Ok
FlippinMad: I’m stressing about it so I’m not sure if I can wait
FlippinMad: Can I ask questions and you can decide if you want to say or not?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: you can ask. I can’t promise any answers.

FlippinMad: Thank you
FlippinMad: Did you know Skitter? Weaver I guess

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I didn’t know her. Not really
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: We crossed paths.

FlippinMad: She’s one of the people I ask people about and they get mad or defensive. Or they tell me they have something to do and never get back to me

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Yep.

FlippinMad: Why?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Short answer: I can’t/won’t say

FlippinMad: Okay

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Longer answer: I don’t know how things unfolded, but I think people fall into types and categories. I don’t know enough to say one way or the other but I think she was looking for something.

FlippinMad: I don’t know if I understand

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You’ve seen the video stuff?
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She hurt someone you know?

FlippinMad: I tried to find everything I could get. I’ve seen the cell phone movie from the cafeteria. I saw a few. not just the big one that was on the news. Then I went back to find other news and footage. Then I followed along
FlippinMad: Her joining the heroes and later with her talking to schoolkids but there wasn’t much good video with that second one. I saw the movie of her in New Delhi and I saw her on TV here and there.
FlippinMad: She hurt people I care about I guess. That’s not why I’m asking

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’ve seen the same. I saw her as the novice warlord
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She hurt an awful lot of people. A crazy lot.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She killed one of our best heroes
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She also joined the Levi fight. She apparently helped against the S9. She joined the Wards
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: It’s hard to reconcile

FlippinMad: That’s my problem
FlippinMad: I want to figure it out but there are gaps

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I don’t have the answers for you. I can only theorize
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I read a thread on PHO a few days ago and it made me think. I said I think she’s someone who was looking hard for an answer. I think she was wounded and lost and for this reason & probably because of other factors she did a lot of damage while looking. The people she was with. Things being primed for everything to fall down. Timing or bad luck. Personality.

FlippinMad: Wounded

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’m looking at my history and I’m having trouble finding the thread
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: there are people who are searching I think and there are people who just are. I think both can be good and both can be toxic. Some people are searching because of something that pushed them. A lot of capes just are. Some are doing the pushing, instead. And there’s all sorts of types.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I don’t know her nearly well enough to say which she was but I don’t think she stood still. Or when she did stand still it was because she was on a precipice, looking for a push or for something to push. But again I don’t know her.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You would have to explain more about what you want to know for me to give you any more of an answer

FlippinMad: I pushed her

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You pushed her?

FlippinMad: I really hope you don’t block me or ignore me
FlippinMad: I’ll try to explain but give me a moment.
FlippinMad: Do you remember me? We met a few times but I think the only time we had a conversation was before the Vice-Versa photoshoot. There were six of us who were around the same age and the designers were taking a while.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I remember that. A bunch of non-capes from around the city, dressed up as capes, some of us local capes in fancy dress. Skitter wasn’t a part of that, obviously.

FlippinMad: Yeah. I’m starting back at the beginning
FlippinMad: They picked top athletes, valedictorians, bunch of others.
FlippinMad: You were hanging out with us. Shadow Stalker and the rest of us were joking around.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I remember now. Emma?

FlippinMad: Her friend. I’m the short one. It was her biggest shoot ever and she was super psyched. I tagged along. We were joking around and you were laughing with us and the staff were running around freaking out and trying to do last minute costume changes
FlippinMad: You were in fancy clothes and you had one of those masks on a stick, and Clockblocker was nearby complaining about having to hold his mask up until Ageis (sp?) got some ribbon and tied it to his head for him, which made the hairdresser freak out

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Aegis
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: They catered those nonalcoholic soda cocktails with layered colors. We drank them like they were water
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: and the one woman’s eyes bugged out when she saw what the bill was. I felt so sorry for her.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: We gave the staff so much grief.

FlippinMad: But that was part of the fun
FlippinMad: Yeah. It was like a dream, hanging out with heroes and cool people. Everyone was so fancy, including my friend. It was the one time in my life where I felt like I was one of the teens in one of those overly polished scenes in a teen movie where everyone looks so perfect
FlippinMad: I was really really hoping that they were going to just pull me in as an extra
FlippinMad: Because one of the kids they’d invited had backed out.
FlippinMad: But it didn’t look like it was going to happen and I was having enough fun that I didn’t mind too much. I said things and people laughed at it. And everything was great until then

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I said something didn’t I?

FlippinMad: You called us a bunch of bitches

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: That was it.

FlippinMad: You said ‘This was such a nice night and you c-words had to spoil it by being disgusting. Come on.’
FlippinMad: and then you walked away and most of the heroes and heroines went with you or whatever. Leaving just me and Emma and a couple of others.
FlippinMad: They 100% went into…
FlippinMad: I don’t know what you call it. Defense mode. They wanted to bring things back to center. Normalize. They were saying things like “what’s bugging her? We weren’t saying anything that bad”
FlippinMad: And I was sitting there being quiet and I remember thinking they were wrong. we were kind of being bitches and we were kind of going too far when ragging on people who weren’t there.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: The disabled girl I think. We were having to wait because they were having to adjust her costume to work around her back brace.

FlippinMad: Yeah.
FlippinMad: We said something loud enough for her to hear from the other end of the room and you spoke up and then you went to go hang with her instead
FlippinMad: The night didn’t seem as magical after all that. I was really bothered.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I barely remember beyond that. I did the photoshoot and we tried to cheer the girl up. It was mostly great and I saw Emma a few times after that and there were no problems but we weren’t friendly

FlippinMad: It was the first time in my life I stopped and took stock and asked myself “am I a good person?”

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: To an extent you get a pass. To an extent. We were 13-20 I think. You were closer to 13 than 20. Teenagers are shitty and most teenagers make a couple of mistakes. Not excusing it. It sucked as a thing. But teenagers being asshats mitigates it

FlippinMad: No
FlippinMad: I was really fucking shitty.
FlippinMad: I think its worse because I had this wake up call and I asked myself if I was a good person
FlippinMad: Except I never got around to answering that question. I kept putting it off and feeling shitty about it
FlippinMad: We kept being bitches. And then a couple months after that we put Taylor in the hospital. Skitter. I don’t know if she had powers then but if she did then I don’t know why she didn’t murder us all

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You’re the bullies that pushed her over the edge

FlippinMad: Me and Emma and our friend Sophia and Julia and a few others. But we were the main three or four

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I feel dumb not connecting those dots before. Preoccupied atm and I was preoccupied then. Fuck me. Emma was one of them? They kept your names out of the media

FlippinMad: Word still got out.
FlippinMad: So this is where I am because I almost feel responsible? Or I don’t know if I’m responsible
FlippinMad: But we pushed her
FlippinMad: And after that she joined bad guys and robbed a bank
FlippinMad: And then somewhere after that the empire got upset at her and her group and called them out before attacking the city and RIGHT after that the Endbringer attacked.
FlippinMad: There were all these theories about why it attacked Brockton Bay and the big two were that there was a holy grail or something? I didn’t follow that one. They said it might have to do with why people wanted to control the city?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: A target. Something that would make the city valuable. Or someone. Endbringers have gone after specific people before

FlippinMad: Ok. I don’t know. The other one was that the city saw so much fighting in a short time. Taylor was a part of that and I’m part of what pushed her out there
FlippinMad: I know I sound narcissistic and shit but…

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Are you gonna finish that sentence?

FlippinMad: I don’t know. I feel responsible
FlippinMad: I was pretty much there at the beginning and I pushed her and…
FlippinMad: it feels like I was at the top of a hill and I pushed a rock down it and it rolled down out of sight
FlippinMad: and then this rockslide starts further down the hill and wipes out a town and kills this really important person and a whole bunch of other horrible things.
FlippinMad: …and I go looking and my rock is lying there in the devastation. Nobody’s saying what happened. her wiki page is gone and people get annoyed or upset when I ask. I want to know what happened when I couldn’t see. Every non-answer I get makes it worse

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She was her own person. She made her own decisions along the line.

FlippinMad: I know that

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You don’t own her. You don’t own every decision she made or the whole fallout

FlippinMad: I know. But I didn’t help matters.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: No. You definitely own some of it.

FlippinMad: And you can’t tell me what happened.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I can’t & won’t. But I guess I can say this.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: With the evidence we have we know she did some good things. She did some bad things. She did some incredibly controversial things. She was more vicious and ruthless than she needed to be maybe.

FlippinMad: Am I responsible for that extra viciousness and ruthlessness?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Can’t say. Neither can you. But it probably didn’t fill her with smiles and joy did it?

FlippinMad: I spat on her once. It was Emma who really got to her and Sophia who went out of her way to hurt her. I was…
FlippinMad: I put her backpack in the toilet once. Books, notebooks and all. The water was clear but it was still the toilet and yeah. I put glue on her desk and juice on her seat and I stood by when the others were doing the worst stuff.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Fucking why?

FlippinMad: I don’t know. I never really stopped to think about it. My friend was a model and my other friend was a top athlete. Maybe I wanted to keep up. I told myself it was prank tier stuff but at the same time
FlippinMad: I’m saying this because this is like I’m confessing but like…
FlippinMad: Some time between when that photoshoot happened and when we put her in the hospital we were talking. Emma Sophia Julia and I. We figured we were falling into a pattern and we kept knocking her down when she picked herself up too much.
FlippinMad: and I had this moment where I saw she was really low and I spat on her. I remember the look on her face
FlippinMad: what the hell was wrong with me? I didn’t wake up to what I was doing until I got fucking caught which is just so doubly shitty. My parents found out when we all got called to school and that was the last time I interacted with Taylor. Moved away with Leviathan.
FlippinMad: I fucking spat on her face

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Stop now please

FlippinMad: ok

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Ok.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: If you kept going I would’ve closed this and left you to it. Now I’m going to try to give you your answer here. Ok?
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Even though you probably don’t deserve it.

FlippinMad: Yeah

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Draw your own conclusions. Look at who she was and extrapolate. She did good she did bad. As time passed yes the bad things might have faded some but the controversial stuff she did might have gotten worse. Extrapolate.

FlippinMad: You’re saying that’s what happened? At the end. She did some good and she did some bad but she did something super controversial?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I am saying *nothing*. I am suggesting that if you are wondering what happened when you couldn’t see then you can make some educated guesses.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She killed people. She hurt people. She may have played a part in a war over the city. She threatened innocents with bugs and choked more than one person to death or nearly to death by shoving spiders and centipedes down their throats. She killed Alexandria at a time when we needed Alexandria most.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She consorted with rapists terrorists and monsters.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: And because it eneds to be said yes she became a hero. That counts for something maybe. Maybe she had to. Maybe not.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She was there at the end and whatever she did, nobody will speak of it, at least for now. Fill in the blank
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Now she’s gone and you’re still here.

FlippinMad: Gone?
FlippinMad: she retired? Or she’s dead? Gone gone?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She is *gone*.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: But listen to me. because you made the choices and you carried on when you could’ve stopped and you spat on her and I’m not ignoring that. I’ve been holding back so I can get to it now.

FlippinMad: I’m listening

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: She was all of those things and she might have still been a better person than you

FlippinMad: …

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Feel shitty? Good. Is it weighing on you or eating at you or making you wonder? Fucking good. That’s the way it should be.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Carry it. Own it. Make allowances for the fact that you were a teenager but don’t you dare excuse it or ignore it
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: If owning it means you assume the worst case scenario? that you pushed her and she took action and that line of action ended in the end of the world being uglier than they needed to be? Fine. Make do.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Maybe things would be better. Maybe they would be worse. Maybe someone else would have taken the same role. Maybe we would all be dead. You might not ever get a clean answer and that might be her justice against you

FlippinMad: Yeah

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: All this I’m saying? I feel like I can say it because I have my own regrets and misdeeds. I’m trying to own them just like I’m telling you to. I didn’t fucking spit on a girl when she was already having a bad day or make fun of a disabled girl on what should’ve been one of the top ten days of her life but I could probably make a priest’s jaw drop if I were the type to visit a confessional
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’m not giving you advice I wouldn’t take myself
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Carry it. Take it with you and use it as motivation to make things better. We need a fucking lot of that motivation.

FlippinMad: I’m training to be a teacher

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Then I hope 10x as much that you own this and learn from it

FlippinMad: Yeah
FlippinMad: Thats kind of the plan. I want to anyway but the school turned me down.

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Anything else?

FlippinMad: When do I get to put this behind me? When do I get forgiven or get to forgive myself?

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: You’re asking me? Never.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I don’t believe in forgive & forget. Not for the things I’ve done. not for what others have done to people I care about. Not for what’s been done to me.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: The moment we forget is the moment we allow those wrongs to be done again.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Forgiveness is the easy way out. Less to carry.

FlippinMad: That doesn’t seem fair

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Villains outnumbered the heroes. Now heroes outnumber villains. Allegedly. People lost everything and they didn’t deserve to. Some people get powers and some don’t. Things are the furthest thing from fair.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Maybe it’s not fair that she’s gone and you’re here.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Maybe you will get the answer about what happened and you’ll feel better and that’ll be unfair because you shouldn’t.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Maybe the opposite is true and no good answer will come out and she’ll be forgotten without tombstone or anything else.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I expect we’ll get the answer and it’ll be an unhappy compromise between the two

FlippinMad: It doesn’t seem fair to yourself I mean

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I’ll handle me. You handle you. You focus on making sure no girl you teach gets spat on, short girl from the photoshoot.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: It’s easy enough to keep something moving once it’s already moving, but getting it going in the first place is hard. That’s the thing about second chances and fresh starts. It’s a (re)start. You gotta get things moving all over again, the second time around.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Let’s try to make sure things are moving in the right direction. Alright? Deal?

FlippinMad: Alright.
FlippinMad: Not quite the response I expected

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I had the impression it’s the response you were asking for

FlippinMad: You might be right.
FlippinMad: Thanks

FlippinMad has left the conversation

Ward is the second work in the Parahumans series, and reading Worm first is strongly recommended.  A lot of this won’t make sense otherwise and if you do find yourself a fan of the universe, the spoilers in Ward will affect the reading of the other work.

Ward is not recommended for young or sensitive readers.

⊙

It was a second chance for humanity as a whole, and they’d gone and screwed it up from the start by coloring the city gold, of all colors.

The skyline was a half-and-half mix of skyscrapers and buildings in progress.  The latter were skeletons of tall buildings in the process of being filled in and put together, and hazard signs, tarps, the materials that made up the countless cranes and the painted letters on steel girders were all in bright yellows.  The completed skyscrapers were paneled with mirrored or reflective glass that were tinted in that same hue.  All put together, the light that bounced off of the city and reached skyward gave the clouds linings that were gold, not silver.

It was such a fucking shame that it had to be the case, intentional or not.

My phone was buzzing with texts.  I pulled it from my skirt pocket and looked while I walked.

Parental Unit 1:
BBQ tonight with everyone
My house
Can you come?

I glanced around to make sure I wasn’t going to walk into anyone, then stepped off the sidewalk, into a gap between two display windows that bowed out and forward.  In front of me, an assortment of people walked.  People in business clothes walked briskly, while some elderly people meandered.  A whole herd of kids were hurrying off to school.

I typed out my reply.

Me:
That’s short notice

Parental Unit 1:
Michael is swinging by
There has been talk of everyone getting together.
It seemed worth trying to arrange
If you can’t come that’s ok I understand

Me:
If I didn’t come, would be because of work. New semester & lots to do. Might come very late

Parental Unit 1:
Spur of moment thing that is almost pulled together
Only missing you
Not to guilt you ha ha

Ha ha.  She never liked using shorthand like ‘lol’.

No.  No guilt at all, mom.

Parental Unit 1:
Come if you can
Will save you dessert just in case

My typed reply was interrupted by a crash.  The stride of every person on the sidewalk in front of me and every person on the other side of the street was interrupted, as they stopped, heads turning.

I put the phone away, the message half finished.  The impact had been at the nearest intersection, where a smaller road cut through one of the downtown areas.  I had to push through the bystanders closest to the scene to get there, and I could hear the victim’s wail of distress before I was halfway through.

A car accident.  There were no injuries, and I couldn’t see blood.  Nothing suggested that anyone had died.  Not that anyone would have guessed by the sounds the man was making.

A teenager stood outside her car, the front corner and passenger-side mirror trashed.  She’d hit one of the pillars that lined the street.

An older man was doubled over, but he was on the far side of the pillar, not a location that suggested he could have been hit.  He was elderly, with gray hair that still had color in it.  Two people had already drawn close to him, supporting him while he knelt, rocking slightly in place.  The sound he made was the heartbroken, strained sound that people made when they couldn’t even draw in a full breath.

Such shitty, shitty bad luck, that he’d been here when the collision happened.

‘Pillar’ was the wrong word, but the right word felt wrong.  ‘Monument’ implied something huge, but it was barely taller than I was, maybe three feet across at the base, tapering to two feet across at the top.  Plaques were recessed into three of the four faces – the fourth had come free and fallen after the collision.  Each plaque bore an etching of a face, a name, a date of birth, a date of death, a message.

I looked down the length of the one-lane road.  There were as many pillars as there were trees, and there were a lot of trees, enough that the sunlight that peeked past them was dappled.   This pillar was one of what had to be over a thousand that had been set throughout the city by now, punctuating quaint streets and surrounding parks.  Places that were nice.

They were part of an initiative by an independent cape, a hero turned rogue, helping out.

There could easily be a thousand more of these pillars before the year was over, that number repeated every year thereafter, and if that work continued for another fifty or a hundred years, there wouldn’t be a pillar for one percent of the people we’d lost.  Not even if ‘we’ were just the people who hailed from the northeastern U.S..

The girl who’d been driving the car had a thousand-yard stare as she faced down the small crowd.  She looked like she’d just hit a real person and reality was sinking in.

The wailing stopped.  People were consoling the old man, some shooting hard looks at the girl who didn’t seem to be registering much of anything.

“Hey,” I called out.

She didn’t seem to register that I was talking to her, as she stared at the lower portion of the pillar that had crumbled, stone chunks broken away, cracks webbing across the surface.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

She nodded, said, “I’m so sorry.”

The old man looked up at her.

People in the crowd were staring, apparently angry on the old man’s behalf.  One hapless teenager and thirty or forty very upset people.

“Listen,” I told her.  “Stay close by, okay?  I’m sure someone in the crowd there is calling for help-”

Someone in the crowd raised a hand to get my attention.  They had a phone to their ear.

“-They’re calling for help.  They’ll be here shortly.  Don’t go anywhere, you can explain what happened, alright?”

That seemed to get through to her.  She nodded again, retreating to her car, apparently to sit in the front seat.  Good.  That was handled.

Until she stopped at the door, turned around, and addressed the old man and the crowd, “I’m really goddamn sorry I broke your thing.”

The grieving man rose to his feet, stepping forward at the same time.  He pulled away from the supporting hands of the people around him, his face contorting.

I stepped in his way, my arm out.  He pushed forward, and I caught him in a half-hug with one arm, stopping him.  He reached out and tried to push me aside, and I caught his arm.

He was a guy, but he was an elderly guy.  It wasn’t much of a contest.  The moment he met resistance, he sagged, and I did what I could to keep him from outright collapsing as he slowly sank to his knees again, sobbing openly.

I took the opportunity to turn him a fraction so he wouldn’t be looking at the girl or the pillar as he knelt there.

In the background, that girl seemed to flounder in shock, useless, not sure what to do with herself in the face of this moment of violent grief.   She looked at me, but I didn’t want to say anything that might agitate the man I was dealing with.  She looked to the crowd, and she saw only angry stares.

I wasn’t sure what she’d seen, if it was a motion from someone, a particular emotion on a particular face, but she found the reason to get moving again, getting into the car, slamming the door behind her.  The man I was holding jumped at the sound.

The man stopped resisting altogether.  It had been a fast enough change in attitude that I had to wonder at what he would have done if I hadn’t intervened.  Shouted in her face?  Grabbed her?  Would he have lashed out and struck the girl?  If he would’ve gone so far as to use violence, would it have been relentless, requiring people to pull him off, or would he have stopped the moment he was interrupted?

I gradually relaxed my hold on him.

The crowd, too, seemed to realize that the situation had mostly de-escalated.  The girl was in her car, the old man wasn’t an apparent danger to himself or others so long as I was here.  That was enough for the assembled group to start breaking up.

I stepped back, hands partially raised in case he started forward again, and to enable me to act if he seemed like he might fall.  I couldn’t just say the pillar would get fixed, or that things would be okay.  The old man hadn’t shed tears for the pillar.

I didn’t want to say ‘sorry’, and echo the kid in the car.

I almost asked if there was anyone I could call.  I stopped myself when I realized the answer could be no.

“How about we get away from here?” I asked, keeping my voice soft.  “We can go grab a coffee or tea, and you and I can talk.”

The man looked at me, as if just now realizing there was a person right next to him.

“It’s got to be better than violence,” I said.

“I don’t – I’m not violent,” he said, sounding very small.

The heads of the crowd turned in reaction to something outside my field of view, and the old man’s head turned as well.

Behind me, it seemed.  A man in costume.  It was a good outfit, too, more in the dollars that had been put into it than in terms of looks, but that was personal opinion.  Partial discs of metal seemed to intersect his body, forming a look where he looked like a blender caught mid-whirl, axe blades and metal rings jutting from his breastplate, armguards, leg armor, and even his face, with blades running along one brow and cheekbone to frame one eye.

There were heavier blades at his hands and feet, such that it looked like he shouldn’t be able to walk or even stand without difficulty.  As it was, he had one end of his long-handled axe resting on the ground, the length of it bowing beneath his weight as he perched on it, one arm outstretched to one side, hand gripping the head.  He was crouching on the thing while it rested at a diagonal, in a way that looked like he’d wipe out if the end of the weapon lost traction on the roadtop.

Fuck me.  Not what we needed right now.

The old man started to stand.  I helped him.

“Can I do anything to help?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said.  “Minor accident, we’re just waiting for cops to come and assess things, take numbers.”

I was barely done speaking when someone in the crowd said, “We don’t need you.”

I watched him glance over the small crowd, looking for the person who had spoken.  He kept looking out for the speaker as he told us, “There’s some police on their way.  With all the reconstruction and the lower priority, they’re trying to get through the traffic right now.”

“That’s good to know,” I said.  “Thank you.”

He nodded.  He looked deeply disturbed by the one comment he’d heard.  I caught a glimpse of the emblem on his sleeve.  A badge, not a personal symbol or icon, but part of the team he belonged to.  Advance Guard.  They were a team with an agenda to push.  The world had ended, and they were pushing hard for a better and different tomorrow.

I could respect that.

I could also cringe inwardly at the fact that our superhero here was implicitly sporting a ‘move forward’ ideology when that was the last thing this old man probably wanted to hear with a freshly reopened emotional wound.  Time and place.  Unfortunately, because of the team emblem the cape had on his breast- a stylized figure holding a shield shaped like a greater-than symbol, the guy represented that ideology every time, in every place.

He walked over to the car, still watching the crowd, and he exchanged a few words with the girl in the driver’s seat.  I was glad for that, at least.  I had my hands full with the old guy and nobody else was stepping up to do it.

The cape stepped away from the car, looked at me and the old man.  “He’s okay?”

“The pillar.  It’s for his-” I started, looking at the plate on the pillar for a clue.

“Son.  My son,” the man said.

“My condolences,” the hero said.

The man tensed.  They were words that made it worse, not better, somehow.

“Go,” someone in the crowd said.  A different person than the last.  “We’re fine.”

The people that had been splintering away were holding position now.  I could see the hostility.  The summer heat was holding out through the start of September, making things just a little more uncomfortable, tempers a little shorter.

“Yeah,” the hero said, more to himself.

It put me in mind of a scene from the history books and the grainy old news footage of an event from the mid-80s.  Back in the day, when the superheroes could be counted on the fingers of both hands, there had been a riot over a sports match.  The anger and chaos had outweighed the respect the rioters had for the hero that had stepped in.  Someone had struck out with a blunt object and hit the hero.  He’d died before he reached the hospital.  We’d called him the second cape after Scion, but he might well have been the first, after all.

Did I think that would happen here?  No.  Too small a group, the emotions were different, there wasn’t enough chaos.

Still, the general setpieces were here.  The barely restrained emotion.  The lack of care.  The ill-timed intervention of the man in costume.  The lack of respect in particular was in play.  For Vikare, it had been because so many people hadn’t truly believed the powers were real, and he had apparently held back to avoid scaring people.

For this cape from Advance Guard, it was the opposite.  He’d gone all out, we’d gone all out.  Capes still hadn’t been able to stop the world from ending.

We were back at the beginning in so many ways.

“Yeah,” the hero said again.  He seemed to wrestle with what he was going to say next before deciding on, “I’m going to go.”

I wanted there to be people in the crowd who spoke up.  I wanted there to be other things besides this sentiment of hostility and rejection.  For this guy and for all the rest of us.  Were there any people who wanted to say something positive?

Nobody.  Or if there was anyone, they were afraid to speak out against the herd.  I didn’t want to leave it like this.

“Nice response time,” I said.

He turned my way and raised an eyebrow.

“You showed up quick.  It was impressive.”

He nodded, studying me as if trying to find the catch.  “It’s what I do.”

I wanted to say something more, but I didn’t want to push my luck.  It would have been nice if he’d been less dismissive when I was throwing him a bone.

“Take care,” he said.  “Cops are on their way.  I’ll go let them know what’s up.”

“Thanks,” I said.  “You take care too.”

He stepped down from the pole of his battleaxe and set foot on the road.  Pavement splashed as if he’d stepped in a puddle.  More splashed and rippled as he moved his axe in a circle around him.

When he took a step and moved, it was faster than I could track.  I could see the splash that followed behind, a cresting wave that quickly settled, leaving only a faint wavy pattern in the road as it dissipated.

I’d spoken against the herd.  I tried not to pay too much attention to them or give them any excuse to push back against me, instead turning my attention to the old man.

“I’m offering tea or coffee, my treat.  We can talk it out, or talk about something else entirely,” I told him.  “As soon as the police are done.”

He still looked like he was carrying that fresh pain, in expression and posture.  He flinched some as he looked at his son’s memorial pillar.  He gave the girl in the car a hard look, then seemed to let the anger out, sagging.

She was in the driver’s seat, both hands and forehead on the wheel.

“No,” he said.  “You’ll have some place to be.  I shouldn’t keep you more than I have.  I’ll be fine.”

“Work,” I said.  “They wouldn’t fire me, especially if I explained.  I’d get in trouble, maybe, but I wouldn’t mind much.  Job is… a seven out of ten fit.”

“Seventy percent is a lot better than some are getting,” the man said.  “Keep that job.  I’ll manage now.”

I glanced at the girl in the car.  She had barely moved.

“You’ll leave her alone?” I asked.

The old man heaved out a sigh.

“She’s a kid who made a stupid mistake,” I said, in case he was trying to come to a decision.  “You don’t have to forgive her, but you can’t go and hurt her or anything.”

“I wouldn’t have…” he said, and he didn’t finish the sentence.  Because he might have, or because he didn’t know what he wouldn’t have done.

“Yeah,” I said.  “That’s good.”

“Go.  Work.  Don’t let me keep you,” he said.  “I’ll be straight with the police there.”

“I’ll stick around for the cops and then duck out.”

The police cars had appeared at the edge of the block, but with traffic on the narrow road slowed by the girl’s car, they’d stopped there.  The cars couldn’t progress, but the police were getting out.

One officer went to talk to the girl, another to the old man.  I waited around a minute, then gave a statement and my info.

As in most things having to do with law or bureaucracy, it took longer than it should have, for a relatively simple process.  I hurried to the high school once they were done with me, and I arrived rather late.

High school.

We still weren’t at the point where we had nice lawns and yards.  This schoolyard was no exception.  We had grass and fields, yes, but it was coarse and the ground beneath wasn’t usually landscaped.  The area was large with large trees left untouched in the corners, chain link fence separating the field from the roads on two sides, the grade school formed the third boundary to the west, and the high school formed the fourth boundary to the north.  The ground was uneven, more hilly than flat, and there were still large stones here and there, and a seemingly out of place play structure for the grade schoolers.

It was an odd thing.  So often, nature was transplanted into a city, and it was new and inauthentic, made overly neat.  Trees, lawns, flowers.  Here, the nature was rough and unpolished, the city itself new and somewhat artificial in how overly tidy it was, untouched by time or elements.

A sports field in the middle section separated the grade schoolers’ area from the theater.  It was a stage in the old Roman style, slabs of stone set into the ground like stairs, stepping down as they got closer to the stage, where the platform sat.

Hundreds of students had gathered on the stone seats, and more stood around the top edge of the theater, watching and listening.  They were our survivors, our next generation.  Not so different from the crowd I’d had to deflect earlier.  A third of them still wore the very simple clothes that were handed out with supplies in the tent cities.  Some had even taken to strategically ripping and dressing up those clothes.  I didn’t fault them for it.  It was hot.

A speaker carried the voice to those of us on the top edge.

The teachers of the school were on the stage, but they weren’t speaking.  It was a series of community leaders and volunteers instead.

“…And I make that a guarantee to you,” a man in an orange vest was saying. “If you take those credentials, bring good shoes and work clothes, and if you don’t screw around, you can walk into any lot and you can be working within the hour and get your pay by that day’s end.  Good pay.  You can do whatever you want, after school, but you’ll always have this as a fallback, you’ll have the security of being able to walk into a lot and have a job waiting for you.  We can always use more hands.”

Not enough seats at this school either.  High school was and might well continue to be a half-day thing.  The people on the stage were telling the kids their other options for the other half of the day.

I spotted Gilpatrick on the stage.  He wore a black t-shirt and gray pants with boots, and in the summer heat he was sweating a fair amount.  He had no hair on his head, but he had a five o’clock shadow well before five o’clock, bushy eyebrows and thick hair on thick forearms.  Everyone else looked like they were trying to make their best pitch, in dressing nice and wearing smiles.  Gilpatrick looked like he was trying to scare his prospects away.

Some of the non-prospects were standing around the upper edge, looking down at the new students and the stage.  Most were senior students who’d picked what they’d do with their half-days last year, now waiting to induct the others.  Some were siblings of those seniors, or younger friends.  Others were like me, miscellaneous staff for miscellaneous roles.

I joined them.

“We wondered if you’d bailed,” Jasper said.  He was very much a teenager, with acne, thin chin-hair and black hair that had had product in it, that had turned spiky from sweat.

“Delayed by a car accident.”

“Everyone’s okay?” he asked.

“Yep.”  Insofar as anyone is okay.  “Has Gil done his five pounds of gun thing?  I was kind of looking forward to it, it’s so corny.”

“I think he’s saving it for the deeper explanation later.  He mostly talked about how he was going to make it his objective to make people quit, he isn’t going to pay anyone, job prospects suck, he’s going to make people march in the heat and the cold for miles while carrying unreasonable burdens.  The ‘five pounds’ speech isn’t bad, you know.  It gets through to the kids,” Jasper said.  For all that he was defending the speech, he smirked a bit.

“It gets through to most,” Cubs said.  He was a big guy, tall, broad-shouldered, fit, with his hair cut short.  He thought for a second and then amended his statement, “some.”

“Us,” Jasper said.

“Guess so, yeah,” Cubs said.

I didn’t miss the glance he shot at the girl at the far end of our little sub-group.  Cami wore an expression I might have termed ‘resting angry face’.  Perpetually pissed.

All three of them, and many other members of the group besides, were dressed in similar shades as Gilpatrick.  Blacks and grays.

“I’m going to duck into my office,” I said.  “I want to check my email and make sure it’s nice and neat if anyone stops in.”

“Only a short bit before we migrate over,” Cubs said. “One more speaker.”

“I’ll let Gilpatrick know you’re there,” Jasper said.  He extended a fist.  I rolled my eyes and instead of tapping it with my own, pushed it away.  Jasper smiled.

My destination wasn’t in the high school, but was across the street.  It was an open building with a partial second floor.  The main floor was hardwood, with mats folded and piled up at the side.  A few more senior students were already there- some were just entering or leaving the showers.  It seemed like a good idea for cooling down, but I didn’t have the time.

I waved at some of the seniors in passing and headed up the stairs.  The stairwell ran up one wall, unbounded by barriers, so it offered a view of everything below.

My office was the closest thing I had to a home, in this world.  It was narrow and long, with a bookshelf at the right wall, a desk, computer and chair.  Some boxes were piled up in the corners.

The bookshelf was my accomplishment.  My fingers ran along the spines of books and other texts.  Many of the works were collections of articles or official documents, bound by hand with a three-hole punch, rings, and patience.

Parahuman science.  University textbooks, old workbooks with notes- not all mine.  There were important articles, copied to plain text and printed out, with a lean toward the sciences, the nuances, the big revelations and reveals.

Official files.  Classification documents.  Then there were the notes for case one, case fifteen, case thirty-two, case fifty-three, case ninety.  The ‘cases’ were the events the PRT had deemed of interest.  Riddles both solved and unsolved.  My collection there was incomplete, but some were official enough to be confidential, and I’d never had that access.  Others were closed, the mystery deemed nonexistent or something to be folded into popular knowledge.

I had other files.  There were names on those files.  Whittler, Bilious, King Crow were some of the many on the shelf I’d deemed ‘independents’.  For teams, there were ones like the Ambassadors, Green Tea, N.N., Ossuary, Empire Eighty-Eight, and the Clans.  I’d made it a priority to collect those.  I worried we might need them.

On the bottom shelf, I had my magazines.  Costumes Under Clothes, Gleam, Heroines, Masque, Shine On.  Some of the boxes in the corner had my latest haul.  Much of it would be duplicates.  Maybe I’d give some of them out to seniors.

I could still smell a faint mildewy smell, and promised myself I’d identify the source when I had time.  I’d left the window open, and the weather was warm, which was helping.  A lot of this was what I’d salvaged from the office back home; I’d retrieved it from boxes and filing cabinets and hauled it here over a dozen trips.  I’d rigged up tarps to keep the water off that corner of the house, but some of that moisture had been coming up from below.  I would have to find the source of the smell and transcribe the text before throwing it out.

Maybe I could get Gilpatrick to get a kid who needed punishing to do it for me.

Information was too important.  Even if that information was from the glossy, superficial magazines about superheroines that had been pitched to girls just like me eight to ten years ago.

Faint smells aside, I could draw in a deep breath and feel muscles from shoulder to calf relax.  This was more of that seventy percent part of the seventy percent fit where the job suited me.

That thirty percent, though.  I wouldn’t stay here forever.  I hoped.  It had been a thing that I’d hoped would look good on my college applications.  That hadn’t worked.

I could hear the commotion as the mob of kids started coming in downstairs.

I walked over to my computer and booted it up.  It booted up instantly, but the connection to the internet took a while.  I opened a notebook and began searching through it.

I found the name before the internet succeeded in connecting.  I closed the conversation from the day prior and waited for the internet before composing an email.

To: Deferent.I@Mail
Subject: Damaged pillar
I was a bystander when a car crashed into a pillar on Small St, near Basil Ave.  Thought I’d let you know it’s damaged.  Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help or any info I can provide.

Thanks for what you do.

I sent it, then stood, walking to the window.  I didn’t have much of a view- mostly the side of a building and a bit of the alley.  If I stuck my head out the window, I could see a sliver of the school and some of the street.  Students were milling around, some undecided on where they were going.

My computer chimed.

From: Deferent.I@Mail
Subject: Re: Damaged Pillar
I already heard.  Advance Guard were on the scene and let me know.  Will have it fixed tomorrow.  Thanks.

That would be fixed soon then.  I thought the things were an eyesore, really, but people clearly felt like they were important.

I was caught up in checking recent events online when there was a knock on the door.

Gilpatrick.

“Shouldn’t you be handing out guns to kids?” I asked.  “Or giving a hard-assed speech that sends them running?”

“I wish,” he said.  “Can’t give them guns until later.  Give me a week, we’ll see how many of them I can get rid of.  Can you show your face downstairs for me, so they know who to look for?”

“Sure,” I said.  “Let me get organized and I’ll be right there.”

He didn’t step out of the doorway.  His arms remained folded, and he had paper in one of his hands, held where I might not notice it.

“…Actually,” he said.

“No,” I said.  I gave him a stern look.  “No.  Don’t ‘actually’ me.  Please.”

“Do you know anything about Fume Hood?”

I raised one eyebrow, keeping that stern look otherwise in place.  “Fume Hood?  No.”

“She apparently went by another name, a while back.  Poison Apple?”

“Then I do know stuff.  She went by Bad Apple,” I said.  “And a few other Nom De Pommes.  I know some of her story.  She was controversial.”

“She’s a hero now,” he said.  “She’s getting announced as one member of a new team today.”

I nodded slowly, taking that in.  “That could be bad.”

“It’s looking like it will be,” Gilpatrick said.  He revealed the papers.  “Can you brief my seniors?  Fill them in on who she is?”

“That I can do,” I said.  I approached him and took the papers.

He didn’t let go of them.  He opened his mouth.

“No,” I said.

“I’ve got too many new kids,” he said.

“No, Gilpatrick.”

“My hands are full.  I don’t have enough seniors to manage them all.  I don’t want this to be fun or even tolerable and that requires more supervision.”

I let go of the paper, backing up.  “No.”

“I won’t force you,” he said.  “People connected the new heroine Fume Hood to her old persona.  They’re upset.  Enough that they’re hiring people to kick up a fuss, and we don’t know just who or what’s going to happen.”

I thought of the people who’d been in the crowd when the pillar had been hit.  I could picture it.

“Just that they’re hiring people?” I asked.

“From one of the more distant settlements.  Police know and are taking precautions, hero teams have been notified, but it’s messy.”

“Messy how?” I asked.

“Jurisdictions.  Our apple heroine is on a new team, announcing themselves in a new jurisdiction…”

“…It makes them look bad if they accept outside help or have other teams elbowing in on their big first day.”

“Something like that,” he said.  “Apple girl is getting a lot of serious hate thrown her way online.  If you can tell us anything about how she might react to this situation, or anything else, that’d help.”

“That I can do.”

He went on, “And if you could captain a squad of some new guys I’ve got from another school, let me know if they’re decent and trustworthy, and just do a bit of standing guard, giving advice and information to the officers at the scene, it would be a massive help.”

I gave Gilpatrick my best angry glare, hands on my hips.

“I won’t force you,” he said.  “Superiors are pressuring me to handle this.  If you say no then I’ll figure something else out.”

“You know I’m taking it easy with all this stuff.  I told you on day one I wouldn’t be one of your patrolers.  I’m only here to dispense some advice.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“I’m not frontline.  I can’t be frontline.”

“You’re a natural leader,” he said.

I shook my head.

“I really didn’t want to use Jasper.  He was joking about my speech, so I’m going to make him deliver it to the recruits,” he said.

I smiled, despite myself.  That would be partially my fault, for reminding Jasper.

“Can you do the briefing, at least?” Gilpatrick asked.

“Yeah,” I said.  I dropped my hands from my hips. “She really called herself Fume Hood?”

“Yeah,” Gilpatrick said.  “I don’t take many of the names seriously.  This doesn’t seem much worse.”

“It’s really terrible,” I said.  “A heroine calling herself a hood?  As in a gangster?”

“I think she has an actual hood as part of her costume.”

“I really hope so,” I said.  I sighed and looked at my shelves.  “Give me a second to review files?  I’ll be right downstairs.”

“Just one second,” he said.  “I’m going to have Jasper start with the recruits.  Try to be done before I send them scurrying off.”

I checked the papers.  Forum transcripts, some intercepted emails, some notes on Fume Hood.

I had a folder on my shelf.  Notes from home.  She was from Boston, among other places.  Itinerant.

There were a lot of newspaper articles.  She’d drawn a lot of attention once.  Everyone was supposed to be getting a second chance, and it seemed that people’s memories were long enough that she wasn’t necessarily getting hers.

I gathered everything together, and I headed downstairs.

Jasper was in front of an assembly of roughly a hundred kids.  Boys and girls.  Not all were ninth graders, new to high school.  Some would be refugees, their educations interrupted by the rather massive inconvenience of the world ending.

“…mostly long treks into the middle of nowhere to deliver supplies or check on things.  If we’re lucky, we get a car.  It’s not glamorous.  Seriously.  Run away,” he was saying.  He spotted me coming down the stairs, and a smile crossed his face.  “Once you’ve been with us for two years, you get one of these embarrassments and you have to be seen in public with them-”

He held up a gun with slide back and magazine removed, a bright red bike lock threaded through the bottom of the gun and out the top.

Jasper went on, “And you’ll be expected to clean it as well as the gun you use on the range.  You’ll have to treat it like a real, loaded gun.  That means you pretend it’s loaded, you don’t aim it at anything or anyone you wouldn’t want to destroy, you never leave it unattended, and so on.  We’ll drill it into your skull and frankly, we’re really hoping you make a mistake so we can kick you to the curb.”

The other senior students were dressed in their uniforms now.  Black clothes with some body armor worn over them, and the body armor was recognizable.  In places, flakes of the letters and symbols that had once been stenciled onto the armor panels in white were still visible, having survived the steel wool and turpentine scrub.  PRT issue, salvaged.

When they’d been trying to figure out what to do with the high school kids when there weren’t enough schools and seats for all of them, some idiot in the administration had come up with this.  Some teenagers could go help on farms, some could get trained in construction, some would work, the ones who could keep their grades up enough could take afternoon classes too, and so on.  There were sports teams and clubs.  Finally, there was the patrol group.  Us.

Maybe it wasn’t fair to blame it on an idiot in charge.  Maybe it was inevitable.  Some wanted to feel like they had power, when the capes had dropped the ball.  Some wanted answers.  We talked and ran errands pertaining to power stuff.  Some of the kids might go on to police, investigate, or study the power stuff, as more informed police officers.  Possibly.

This was the thirty percent I didn’t like.  The question mark.  The places this could lead, theoretically.  Places we were already starting to edge toward, slowly but surely.

“Less than five pounds of gun, if you even have a gun,” Jasper said, holding up the gun with the bike lock threaded through it.  He caught my eye as he said it and he had a gleam in his eye.  “Fifteen pounds of armor.  It’ll be twenty-five pounds of armor if you’re with us for the long haul.  These backpacks?  They’re heavy.  They’re miserable.  Twenty-five pounds strapped to you.  Food, water, first aid, tools.”

He holstered his gun and lifted up the bag with two hands, grunting a bit.

“Pay attention to those ratios.  Twenty-five pounds of stuff to support and help…”

He dropped the bag and gave it a pat.

“…A good bit of protection…”

He rapped knuckles against the armor he wore on his chest.

“…And possibly a bit of offense.”

He tapped the gun where it was in its holster, the bike lock draped down and resting against his leg

Gilpatrick stepped up beside Jasper.  “Good.”

“Thank you sir.”

“Students, if you’ll turn around to see the young lady on the stairs…”

The students did.

“…She’s our resident cape expert.  If you’re sticking with us here in patrol block, if her door is open, you can go ask her questions.  She knows her stuff.  If you’re not sticking with us and her door is open, you can go ask her questions and we’ll let you cut to the head of the line.  You’ll find her office upstairs and to the left.”

I hadn’t heard that part before.  Priority to people who weren’t part of the club.  I smiled.

We had more kids than we wanted or could use, even though we didn’t pay any wages until they’d been with us at least a year, and we did everything we could to keep them miserable.  Powers were compelling.  Too many had reasons for wanting to be here.

An unfortunate share of the students were here because they were angry.  Because the patrol block had been started up by some ex-PRT folk and Gilpatrick’s speech aside, a lot of people looked at the armor, looked at the guns, looked at how we touched on the power stuff and the portals, and connected the dots.

“You want to go brief my seniors?” he asked me, from the far end of the room, over the heads of hundreds of new students.

I gave him a mock salute, then finished descending the stairs, joining the seniors while he resumed outlining things for the new kids.  I motioned to the door, indicating for the group to follow.

A few of them were new, Gilpatrick had said.  I didn’t like how angry or naturally resentful some of them looked.  Cami was among them.

“New team is having its grand unveiling at one of the community centers,” I said.  “One member is Fume Hood.  She was a B-list villain, once upon a time.  She’s what we term itinerant.  Wandered from city to city, looking for opportunities or teams to join.  Petty robbery, grand larceny, mischief, vandalism, criminal mercenary work.  A lot of the time she was one of the low-rate hangers-on in a group that a bigger villain would hire to pull a bigger job.  You could even call her a professional distraction.  She started when she was sixteen, stopped at twenty-four or so.  She’d be twenty-nine now.”

They were listening intently, even the new guys.  That was good.

“As a villain, she went by Bad Apple, Poison Apple, Pomme De Sang, probably called herself Applesauce, I don’t even know.  I guess she wanted to corner the market on apple-related names so nobody would have something similar.  She spent a lot of time palling around with a biotinker called Blasto.  She kept going back to him to pair up.  Might have been boyfriend-girlfriend, even.  That ended when the Slaughterhouse Nine passed through Boston.  We don’t know what happened to Blasto, but we can guess it wasn’t good.  Poison Apple got a little reckless after that, even though she hadn’t met up with him in over a year at that point.”

I opened my folder and found one of the articles.  I laid it against the front of the folder and held it out so they could read it.

“She pulled together a group of some old teammates and new teenage villains and pulled a shopping spree, hit a mall and took what they wanted.  Heroes showed up, they ran.”

“Miscarriage,” one of the new people in the group said, reading from the article.

“Poison Apple makes globes in her hands.  One of the tricks she can pull with them is send them flying off in straight lines.  They explode on contact with hard surfaces, just enough oomph to knock you to the ground, and they create clouds of gas or splashes of liquid poison.  Usually enough to make you nauseous, a little bit feeble, more if you touch the poison in its liquid form.  Nonlethal and mostly nonviolent, most of the time.  Except this time, a pregnant lady was caught in the gas, or in the explosion.  She lost her baby, and it became a thing in the media.  Poison Apple turned herself in, partially because of the backlash she’d generated.  She was serving time for pled down charges of assault and battery when Gold Morning came around,” I said.

A couple of the angry faces in the group looked a little angrier.

“She did her time,” I said.  “She made a mistake, she paid for it as much as she was able.  We don’t have enough good jails and so she’s free, and it looks like she’s trying to do good.  That’s pretty decent, really.  She’s not the enemy here.”

“Isn’t she?” someone asked.  Their name might have been James.  They’d been around last year.

“The threat is the people targeting her.  They’ve recruited help.  We don’t know how much, but the intel Gilpatrick gave me said money changed hands.  You guys know the basics when it comes to capes, you can inform the cops if something comes up, you know her story, and you’ll be a few more people in uniform keeping the peace and giving protesters a little more reason to hang back.  If it gets bad, any real danger, you back off.”

There were a few nods.

There were also a few looks on a handful of faces that made me concerned.  Too heated, or too cold.  They weren’t the majority, but I wasn’t sure the majority was on Fume Hood’s side, either.

It put me in mind of the crowd and the broken pillar.  If it was just this, I might have been able to let it lie.  I could have accepted that the students here were among the angriest and most invested in the grittier side of the cape stuff.  That it was just them.

Except it wasn’t.  The old man, the girl who couldn’t drive, the crowd there and the response to the visiting cape… there was so much emotion bound up in things, I couldn’t trust that this was an isolated thing.

I couldn’t stand by and let this be the new normal, without any opposing voices.  Even if my voice was a badly biased one.

With the climate, both general and even the fact that it was hot and tempers would be short, it would be so easy for us to see another Vikare.

I glanced over my shoulder and through the door.  I saw Gilpatrick with Jasper and the kids.

Damn it, Gilpatrick.

“I’ll come with you,” I decided.  “We’ll do our part to keep people organized and keep the peace.”

What did it say about the state of things, if I was increasingly the voice of restraint and reason?

I turned my attention back to the squad.

“For those of you who’ve just joined us, my name is Victoria Dallon, and I’ll be your squad captain today.”

I had badly neglected my locker.  I had an office, so my locker in the changing room was more for the things I didn’t use much at all.

Bag.  The backpack was light, but it only had the nonperishables in it.  I’d done a few patrols for Gilpatrick over the winter, visiting some of the settlements that were a little further afield, while many of the students were taking Christmas off.  I’d also used it for my fitness test.

I set it on the table in the center of the room.  Something to weigh when I was done getting outfitted.  For now, I just needed it out of my locker.  The bag took up the bottom half, the armor took up the upper half.

Outfit change.  I couldn’t go out in a skirt and body armor.  I had some self respect.  The pants in my locker were part of an emergency change of clothes, heavier fabric intended for winter and trips to Bet when the weather was bad.

I hadn’t put the pants through the wash since having to shovel snow over the winter, but I hadn’t worn them much either.  There was still salt crusting the heels, white against black fabric.  I walked over to the sink and rinsed the worst of the salt off, then rolled up the cuffs a bit so I wouldn’t have wet pants slapping against my ankle.

I kicked off my shoes and hiked up the pants so they were under my skirt, then unfastened the skirt.

“Victoria,” Gilpatrick said, behind me, a deep male voice in the girl’s change room.  I jumped a little.  “Are you free to talk?”

I turned my head.  There wasn’t a door to the girl’s changing room, but there was a solid wall blocking the view.  I could see the edge of Gilpatrick’s arm – he stood with his back to the wall and the changing room.

Camisola was in the room too, unpacking and repacking her kits for her bag.  She met my eyes.

“I’ll step out,” she said.

“Thank you, Cami,” Gilpatrick said.  I pulled my shoes back on and laced them as Cami left the room.

Belt.  Holster.  I threaded the belt through my belt loops, careful to position the holster.

Cami was apparently out of earshot, because Gil spoke again.  “Thank you, Victoria.”

“Give me Jasper,” I said.  “For my squad.”

“Jasper?” he asked.  “Why?”

Well, that said a lot, didn’t it?

“Because I’m paranoid,” I said.  Paranoid on more than one front, but I wouldn’t tell Gilpatrick that.  I had suspicions and his willingness to give me Jasper would tell me things.  “Is anyone else standing outside the door?”

“This conversation is just you and me.”

“Okay.  I know Jasper, and I’m honestly more worried about the attitudes of the people you gave me than I am about the protest or whatever it is people are going to pull with Bad Apple.”

“Jasper’s attitude isn’t great.”

“Jasper is a joker and he can be immature, but he can give that five pounds of gun speech because he believes it.  He’s in this because he thinks capes are cool, not because he’s pissed.  Give me one person I know will agree with me.”

“I kind of need every senior I can get.  But I’ll give you that.”

I bit my lip, thinking as I worked the combination of the safe at the topmost section of my locker.  I pulled out the pistol and holstered it.  I kept my hand there, reminding myself of the weapon’s weight as I tried to figure out how to word my question, and if I wanted to ask it.

“Then how about you take some of the angry ones?  The new guys you were giving me.”

“That was a quick assessment.”

I gathered the pistol magazines and slotted them into the pouch, before setting to attaching the pouch to my leg and belt.  “I don’t want them.  I don’t want to get some people from elsewhere with their own habits and ways of doing things, and have to train them on top of doing this thing.”

“Take them, Victoria,” Gilpatrick said.  “They came with good recommendations, they know their stuff, and if it does wind up being a protest, you’ll want the extra bodies.  If it doesn’t, then it doesn’t matter.”

“Things are never that simple, Gil,” I said.

“Take them,” he said, firm.

“You owe me for this,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

I sighed.

Armor.  I pulled my vest from the bottom of the locker.  I saved it for last because once it was on, I wouldn’t be able to bend down or move as easily.  The old name and number was still visible by the impression that had been made in the armor when it had been punched in and painted on.  The steel-wool scrubbing I’d given it hadn’t erased the whole impression.

I didn’t know who Cameron was or where they’d ended up, but I wore their armor now.  I tucked the papers in between my chest and the armor, where the straps would help keep them in place.

I spoke, “It’s a cushy job, I get to geek out and show off, and I like my office and the access I get to the portal, I don’t want to take that for granted, but you owe me a few already.  This is one more.”

“I know,” he said.  “I’ll make it up to you.  I’ve got to run.  Kids to torture.  I’ll send Jasper your way.”

“Alright,” I said.  “Do I need my full pack?”

“No,” he said.  “No, I wouldn’t do that to you.  Full pack is a torment I reserve for the newbies.”

I was glad to put my bag back in the locker.  I heard Gilpatrick walking away, raising his voice to shout orders.

I used fingernails to comb my hair back, then began braiding it.  I had to look in the mirror to make sure I’d gotten all of the stray strands.

Hi me, I thought, as I made eye contact.

How to describe that feeling?  Something resembling relief and a sinking feeling at the same time. It was a small feeling but still one that I would carry with me for the rest of the day.  That day would be a little bit worse because of the moment, but it would feel more stable for the reminder, too.

I had a good two years of experience to draw from, in figuring that out.

I’d stopped braiding my hair, I realized, and I’d started holding my breath without realizing it.  I exhaled, closed the safe, spun the dial, closed the locker, and walked out onto the floor of the building, resuming the braiding of my hair.

Forward.  Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.  Moving on with the day.

I caught up with Jasper as he joined the group.

“I’m driving, apparently,” Jasper said, wangling the keys in front of me.  “And keeping you company.  Gilpatrick explained the situation.”

“Good,” I said.  I pointed in the direction of the bus.  We started walking.

“You’re friends?” one of the new guys asked.

Still braiding, I looked over at Jasper.  “Enhh.”

“You can tell she’s really diplomatic,” Jasper said.

“Work friends, kind of?” I said.

“We don’t hang out,” Jasper said.  “I’m not sure what we’d do if we did.  We don’t have anything in common.”

“We got stuck together for jobs and errands enough times we became familiar with each other,” I said.  “We get on okay.  Jasper’s cool.  Just don’t ask him about the tattoo.”

“Tattoo?” someone asked.

“I’ll explain when we’re driving,” Jasper said, smiling.

We reached the bus.  It wasn’t pretty.  A half-size school bus, rust had been mostly scrubbed away and it had received a paint job in black with white sides.  The emergency exit at the back had been redone so it was the main way in and out, and a passenger seat had been added at the front.  There was an area for supplies and bags to be stowed between the wheels at the right side.

I wrapped my braid around itself a few times, and tied it there in a slightly messy bun-coil, then climbed up to the passenger seat.  The seniors climbed into the back.  There were a few faces I recognized but couldn’t name, a dozen more that I didn’t recognize and definitely couldn’t name.  I could tell that they were from elsewhere by the fact that the armor they’d brought with them had been painted black, rather than have the white letters scrubbed away.  Twenty-four in all.

Jasper took the driver’s seat, starting up the bus immediately.

Even parked in the shade, even in September, the heat was such that the seats were uncomfortably hot.  I’d thought about removing my armor once my hands were free, and carrying it by hand, but I decided to keep it on for the extra buffer.

Didn’t do anything to spare my ass from the warm faux-leather seat.  I didn’t like being aware of my body to that extent.

“Where to?” Jasper asked, rescuing me from my thoughts.

“Norwalk-Fairfield span,” I said.

“Rural, isn’t that?” Jasper asked.

“Last I heard.”

Jasper had to almost stand up to get the perspective to see through the open back of the bus.  He reversed out of the lot and took us onto the road.

“Maybe you guys can answer.  What’s the deal with stretches and spans?” one of the new guys asked.

I turned sideways in my seat, looking back.  Now that I was sitting and looking back at them, they were older, I noted.  Seventeen at a minimum.  “You guys are from one of the denser parts of the city?”

“New York Central.  Near the Bet-Gimel portal,” a girl said.

One of the two big ones, then.  We’d bled into the areas surrounding the portals.  Brockton Bay had been the first, but we’d had a few in a few major cities and New York was a big one.  The cluster of settlements around the portals in the northeastern US and people’s desire to have ready access to that cluster and the resources, community, information and security it afforded had played a big part in the megalopolis forming.

One blob around New York, one blob around the New Brockton settlement, clusters south of New Brockton, near what would or should be Boston, and everything had spread out or extended from there, mostly hugging the coast and connecting to one another.

I explained, “We’ve got these long narrow bands of mingled city and agriculture connecting the primary settlement points, to the point it’s hard to say where one thing starts and the other ends.  And instead of building five big houses they’d rather build an apartment building that hosts twenty, which makes things fuzzy with the distinctions of urban and rural.  So we get the ever-expanding megalopolis blob and we can’t figure out what to call it, even though it’s already this monster.”

Our progress out of the city center was slow.  Construction.  Endless construction.  Jasper seemed happy to be driving, even at a crawl.

“Yeah,” the first guy spoke.

“In terms of the bands that rope everything in together, we go by the cities and locations that were there beforehand.  If you look at where Norwalk would be on a map, that’s the name for the region we’re heading to.  If it’s east-west it’s a span.  If it’s north-south it’s a stretch.  But it’s all a part of the city.”

“What if it’s both?” someone asked.

“Then it’s neither,” Jasper said.  “You just give it a name.”

“More accurately, you try to give it a name and end up in a heated, months-long debate about what to call the area, with way too many emotions tied up into things,” I said.

The guy from right behind me said, “I don’t see why we can’t just give the individual areas names like they used to have.  If it’s close to Norwalk, then we call it fucking Norwalk.”

“Hey,” I said.  I gave a stern look to the guy who’d said it.  “Swearing’s fine, but not if you’re getting heated.  We’re chatting, not getting up in arms.”

“Right.  Sorry,” the guy said.  He didn’t look particularly sorry.

We picked up speed as we pulled onto a street with less construction.  With the back of the bus open and the windows on either side of Jasper and me rolled all the way down, the wind whipped through the bus.  The city smelled like dust, drywall, and hot pavement.

I dangled one arm out the window, moving my fingers and feeling the air moving against them.

“It gets complicated,” I said.  “Geography’s slightly different, they’re hardly checking longitude and latitude exactly when we settle in one place or another.  They’re doing what the surroundings allow.  Means the Norwalk we’re going to might actually be between two places, or off to one side.”

Jasper chimed in, “I always remember the Norwalk-Fairfield span because it’s close to the portal for Earth N.  N for Norwalk.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I guess that works.”

“I’ve got a question for you, though,” he said.

“You want to talk about your tattoo idea.”

“Yes,” he said.

I rolled my eyes.  “Do what you want.”

He turned his head so he could talk to the back of the bus while watching the road.  “We’re doing the squad thing, right?  And a lot of us are doing this with the idea we’ll police the capes, or help them out.”

“Police them, mostly,” a guy said.

“Opinions vary,” Jasper said, “But I don’t want to get sidetracked.  What I’m thinking is, what’s better than a good callsign?  We have nicknames to call each other.  The trouble is getting a good one to stick.”

“Opinions on what a good callsign is are going to vary,” I said.

“Quiet you,” Jasper said.  “You and I have talked about this and I’ve determined you have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to this.  You know the cape stuff, sure, but you clearly don’t get this.”

“You want to decide your own callsign?” the girl from the back asked.

“Jester,” Jasper said.  “And I swear, if people don’t start using it, I’m going to make it happen by getting a tattoo of a jester and ‘fool’ written beneath it, right on my bicep.”

The protests, naturally, started rolling in from the rest of the bus.  He couldn’t decide his own callsign, why would he have it say fool if he wanted the callsign to be Jester, why even have it be Jester?

I tuned it out, sticking my head out the window.  Jasper tried to sell the rest of the bus on his idea and was very thoroughly shot down.  In this, at least, all was right with the world.  It was a bad idea.  Forty year-old Jasper didn’t need to live with the mistakes of seventeen year-old Jasper.

We drove past skyscrapers paneled in gold-tinted glass.  Solar glass, it was supposed to be called.  We drove past parks with the same rough-edged slice of nature that touched the schoolyard back at the high school.  We drove past a lot of construction, and we were lucky that it didn’t slow us down much.

“Victoria Dallon.”

I’d heard my name.  I was broken from my reverie.  How long had we been driving now?  The city was seemingly unending and I didn’t recognize the landmarks enough to nail anything down.

Victoria Dallon.  I looked at myself in the bus’ side view mirror.

“What was that?” Jasper asked, while I remained silent.

“Name sounds familiar,” the voice said, from the back.  It sounded almost smug, knowing.  “Can’t quite place it.”

“That so?” Jasper asked.  “Maybe keep it to yourself, then.”

“Is that how this is?”

“I think it’s how everything is,” Jasper said.  “Not just this.  When you’re bringing up the past, whoever you’re talking to, there are two likely possibilities. First, it’s good, and we miss the shit out of it, or, second, it’s bad and why would you bring up the bad except to be a tool?”

“It could be important,” the guy said.  “It’s good to know who or what we’re dealing with.”

“Could be,” Jasper said.  “But I can tell you this.  Gil trusts her.  I trust her.  If you want to know who you’re dealing with, why don’t you start by taking our cue?”

There was no response from the back.

“Otherwise, if you’re not going to listen to us,” Jasper said, “why are you on our bus?”

Again, no response.

Then, belated, one of the others uttered a quiet, “Leave it.”

Not aimed at Jasper.  My detractor had been about to say something, I took it, and he’d been told to be quiet.  Not the best result, but it seemed to end the line of questioning.

I wondered if there was something nice I could do for Jasper, for sparing me having to handle that.

I fished the papers out from my vest, smoothing them against my lap.  I glanced out the window.  The city had thinned out, and I could see farms and tent cities further out.

We had to be pretty close to our destination now.

I twisted around in my seat again, looking at the people in the back.  I could tell by the way one of them held himself, shoulders square, eye contact forced, that he’d been the one to speak out against me.  He studied me like he would an opponent.

I addressed them, “When we get there, we stay together.  We’ll have a quick chat with the people in charge, all together.  If the police have orders for us, those are the orders we follow.  If not, I’ll tell you guys to get to work.  You head to the crowd, and you say hi.”

“Say hi?”

“Mingle.  Show your faces, let people know we’re around.  Ask how they’re doing.  What do they think?  Look for anyone antsy, especially anyone antsy that we’re there.  Don’t engage if there’s trouble.  Let the police know and let me know, and we’ll figure it out.”

“I like looping through the crowds,” Jasper said.  “We did that once or twice, when Gilpatrick was calling the shots, last year.  People don’t see the face or the hair, only the uniform.  If you loop back, it looks like there are more of us than there are.”

“Give them second thoughts?” the girl from the back asked.

“Something like that,” Jasper said.

I wrapped up.  “When we get settled and things are going to start, we’ll be keeping eyes out or standing guard, probably.  We regroup before then, we’ll figure out what’s up, and see where we’re needed.”

I saw people nod, then turned around in my seat.

“Which street?” Jasper asked.

“Myrtle.”

“I think that’s it down there,” he said.

There were still a lot of tents and cubicle houses hereabouts, it seemed.  On the southern side of the main road, to our left, we had apartment buildings, stores, and something that looked like a brand spanking new swathe of city.  On the other side, it was more construction, tents, farm, and the houses that weren’t real houses- more like mock houses made of panels that had been bolted together, like overlarge tents with hard exteriors.

We turned away from the main road, into the deeper section of the city.  The community center was made of stone, had a squat clock tower situated on top,  and looked stately, even with the tall buildings surrounding it, many at least as tall as the community center was.  A patch of park with a fountain sat squarely in front of it.

School was just getting out, it seemed.  Students were streaming through the area.  They walked through and along the road to the point that we couldn’t get very close.  Many heads turned our way, curious.

Jasper found a parking space a block away from the center, and parked there.  Our people climbed out the back while Jasper and I got organized at the front.

“Jasper,” I said.

“Special orders for me?”

“When and if the rest of them are going through the crowd, stay near the front door.  If anyone gets nervous and ducks out, it might be something.”

“Should I follow?”

“Probably not.  Keep an eye out, let me know if anything happens.”

“And why is this a secret from the others?”

Because I didn’t trust the others.  They’d been foisted on me, they had clear attitudes, and I was worried that if push came to shove, they might let a troublemaker go if it meant fucking with the capes.

“Paranoia,” I said.  I started to climb out of my seat.  “Thanks for the backup back there.  Jester.”

Jasper grinned as my face fell.

“I’m sorry, but it sounds bad,” I said.  “I can’t make this a thing.”

“It sounds bad when you’re saying it as if someone’s pulling your fingernails out while you’re talking.”

“They might as well be,” I said.

“It’s good,” he said.  “It’s cool.”

“It’s against everything I stand for,” I said.  I climbed down from my seat.

“It’s great,” Jasper said, from the other side of the bus.  He tossed the keys into the air and caught them.

Some of the others were pulling on the armor they’d left off while sitting on the bus.  Once we were set, we moved as a group toward the town hall.

The fact that the community center was actually in the center of this neighborhood meant that the foot traffic was heavy.  A lot of it was moving around the crowd that had formed.  A lot of people with signs, but a lot of young and eager eyes.  Kids aged ten to seventeen, all fresh from their first day of school, genuinely interested in their fledgling hero team.

No police parked outside, at a glance.  No barricades, either.

Inside, it was standing room only.  Cheap plastic chairs were arranged in rows and columns, and there were many places where parent and young child shared chairs.

I saw some people up at the front perk up at our appearance, and the crowd parted to let us through.

I identified a woman with gray and black hair and a gray suit-dress that the other people up at the front seemed to be standing around.  I approached her.

“You’re in charge?” I asked.

“I’m the closest thing to someone in charge.  District representative,” she said.  “We don’t have a group like yours here.  You’re all so young.”

I kept still, not letting my emotions show.  I felt the sinking feeling again, without the relief, and without the steadiness that I got from seeing myself in the mirror.

Not a big thing.  It was like treading water and a hand on my forehead pushing me down, before pulling away.  Surfacing again, finding my equilibrium, realizing how tired I was as I resumed treading water.

I was very aware of the eyes on us.

“Do you have more outside?” the representative asked.

“More… of us?” I asked, finding my composure again.

“Yes.”

“No.  No we don’t have more outside.”

She looked spooked.  More spooked after my ‘no’.

“I can’t help but notice that you have no police presence at all,” I said.

“We have some, but not many.  It’s the way it is in Norfair span.”

“Norfair,” I said, noting the coined name.  “It’s not really a presence, is it?”

“No,” she said.  “We didn’t expect this many naysayers.  With this many, they had to have come from outside the community.”

The crowd in the room with us looked eager and happy enough.  A few frowns, but rare.  Had it been just this, overlapping conversations, anticipation, bright eyes and parents with kids, maybe a few people ready to raise some pointed questions if given the opportunity, then all would have been well.

It wasn’t just them.  The protesters outside were audible, even with stone walls between us and them.  Two angry voices outside, for every one quiet, polite person inside.

I didn’t like how much this was stacking up against us.  The police not having much presence, the controversy, the number of protesters.

Paranoia again, that I couldn’t help but wonder about the recruits I’d been given.  Forced to take, as it had turned out.

Too many things together.

“I think we should talk to the capes,” I said.

“Please,” the district rep said.

She led us into the back room, just behind where the de-facto stage was.  The team of heroes was there, anxious, waiting to be announced and to step out in front of the crowd.

Four of them.  Their costumes were close to being clothing, but had just enough stylization to make them something more.  The masks and face-coverings helped to make them more cape-like.

Fume Hood did have a hood, as part of a green hooded coat she wore.  Fans were built into the coat, only partially disguised, each of them much like the ones that were built into the back of a computer, and they made her coat, hair, and hood flap.

There was a man in a deep purple tank top and skinny pants with glass jutting from his skin at the elbows and hands, his upper face only a craggy mass of glass or jewel-like shards sticking out of flesh, just beautiful enough to not be macabre.

A man about my age slouched in a chair, looking dejected.  He had something that looked like small shields over the back of each hand, three large scimitar-like blades jutting from the back of each shield like they were oversize claws.  He wore a top that showed his muscular stomach, with shorts that reached his knees.  A two-part icon was displayed on chest and belt buckle.

The last was a woman in overalls, muscular, with hair shorter than most of the boys in my troupe, something that looked like thick paint slashed across her eyes and nose, and covering her arms up to the elbows.  The paint was black at the very edges, where it was thinner, but pure white elsewhere.  Her eyes were black from corner to corner.

“Great,” the woman with the paint said, sarcastic.  “Just what we needed.”

“We’re here to help,” I said.

“We might need it,” Fume Hood said.

“Do you know who’s after you?” I asked.  “Or what’s going on?”

She shook her head.

“I might be being paranoid, but this feels off,” I said.

“A lot of little things,” Fume Hood said.  “Crystalclear’s getting a bad vibe.”

I nodded.  I looked at the man with the glass chunks where his nose, eyes, brow and scalp should be.

“Have you considered canceling the event?” I asked.

“We were actively debating it before you came in,” the man in purple said.  “We’re split.”

“Can we break the tie?” I asked.

They exchanged glances.

The painted woman scowled, “You can.”

The man with the claws stood abruptly, shoving his chair to the ground in the process, before stalking off.

“Okay,” the painted woman said, again.  She looked at the district rep.  “We’re sorry.  Can you have them disperse?  Tell the protesters they win.”

The rep nodded, hurrying from the room to where the people were seated.

“Death knell for our group,” the painted woman said.

“Maybe.  Probably,” Fume said.  She looked at Crystalclear.  “Feeling better?”

“No,” he said.

Fume nodded at that.

“Would you stick around?” Crystalclear addressed us.  “I wouldn’t mind the backup, if you’re here to help, and I have the sense this is going to get worse before it gets better.”

“Gut feeling sense or… power sense?” I asked.

I could hear the commotion as people started to leave.  I could hear the complaining.  Even before he answered, my gut feeling sense was that he wasn’t wrong.

“The latter,” Crystalclear said, corroborating.

This was the point in time that I would have liked to be able to take to the skies.  Information was important, and if I didn’t have surveillance cameras, I would have been pretty content with a bird’s eye view of the scene.

I clenched one fist, cracking my knuckles, before wrapping my other hand around it, cracking them again for good measure.

I turned to look at the people from the patrol.  “Set up around the building.  Watch what’s going on outside, stay in touch, report anything unusual.  Jasper?  Hang back.”

The others turned to go, some looking back at the capes one last time before leaving.  Interest, other things.

“Can’t hurt,” the painted lady said.

“I’m Victoria,” I said.  “That’s Jasper.  I know Fume Hood from the notes we got, and I caught Crystalclear’s name.”

“Longscratch is the one who just left,” the painted lady said.  “I’m Tempera.”

“Thanks,” I said.  “Good to meet you.  Crystalclear, can you fill me in on your power?  What are you getting?”

“I see through everything,” Crystalclear said, tapping the chunk of crystal that stood out from the lower edge of his eye socket.  “As if everything was crystal.  I’ve learned there’s a lot of nuance to it.  A little bit of seeing into the past, a little bit of seeing into the future, a little bit of a sense of people’s focus.”

“He has a blaster power too,” Tempera said.  “Goes through walls and the ground.  Synergy.”

“I really hope it doesn’t come to actually using that.  Right now, I’m more interested in how this points to possible trouble in the future,” I said.

“Uh,” Crystalclear said.  He looked around.  “It’s hard to explain because it’s not a sense anyone else has.  Say I was looking at a wall.  It looks like a chunk of clear glass and the light catches at the edges and corners and they’re highlighted.”

My eye roved over the room.  It was reminiscent of a teacher’s lounge, but it had less of an emphasis on the lounging.  Coffee cups sat on windowsills and there were places where furniture had been stacked once, and the furniture had been moved out into the open room at the front of the building, where all the people were or had been seated.  Glass cases with model buildings had been brought inside and carefully stacked against the wall.  A long table that might have served as a conference table was folded up in one corner.

I tried to imagine it like Crystalclear was describing it.  A sketch in three dimensions, only the lines visible.  “I follow you so far.”

“The edges of walls and floor are usually clear, crisp, and closer to white.  Solid objects don’t change, so there’s no reason for that to change.  It’s blurred.  Blue tinted.”

“Future sight,” Tempera added.  “Past-sight is red, future-sight is blue.  Like the doppler.”

Crystalclear went on, “In the future, that wall vibrates.  Similar effect with people, but they move around more.  I see you all as streaks, shifting around, white-edged where you’re resting in present.  There is refraction and some fractures around people’s heads, representing focus and kind of thinking.”

“That gets blueshifted redshifted?” I asked.  “It’s not displayed as color?”

Crystalclear nodded his head.  It was a motion made more weighty by the heavy growth at the top of his head.  “Not as color.  It’s… edges to the light around them, sharpness and softness, distortions like how you can look at a glass of water with a straw in it and the straw isn’t straight, or you see multiple straws.   The worst breaks in focus look like grooves or outright breaks.  A lot of people here are going to be distorted soon.  Or were.  They’re leaving and they’re clearing up.”

His head turned as he focused on things on the other sides of the walls.

“What about, say, Jasper?”  I asked.

“Hey,” Jasper said.  “Use yourself as an example.”

Crystalclear looked at Jasper.  “Hard to say.  Whatever it is, it’s small or it’s distant.”

Crystalclear glanced over at Tempetera and Fume Hood.  “Not just him either.  It doesn’t give me much to work with.”

He turned his attention to me.

I cut right to asking my next question, before he could comment.  “Do you see the direction of it?  Anything big and blue that’s suggesting a major thing coming in sometime in the future?  One section of the building that gets hit harder?”

He shook his head.  “I’d have to see it before I saw how things were around it, and even then there’s nuance.”

“You’re thinking of a parahuman or weapon?” Tempera asked.

“I have no idea,” I said.  “If I was a civilian with an issue, and I was going after capes, I’d go big or I wouldn’t try at all.  If we’re talking something that shakes this whole community center… bomb?  Parahumans are definitely possible, except I’m not sure how using parahumans squares with the sentiment toward parahumans.”

Fume Hood spoke up from the background.  “Set us against each other, they benefit either way.”

“Could be,” I said.  I paused.  “As soon as the crowd has dispersed enough, I want to get you guys clear of here.  Do you have a decent mover power to use?”

“Longscratch does,” Tempera said.

“Not a mass mover power, is it?” I asked.  At the negation, I turned to Jasper.  “Can you bring the bus close?  If the crowd is thinning out, you should be able to pull right up to the door.  Take someone with you, if we’re delayed, do like I discussed earlier.  Keep an eye out.”

Jasper saluted, turning to go.

The bus wasn’t elegant, but hopefully it would take us away from vulnerable civilians or areas.

“How is Longscratch?” Tempera asked Crystalclear.

“He’s fine.  Stalked off.  He’s keeping an eye out for trouble,” Crystalclear said.  He pointed up and off to one side.  On an upper floor, it seemed, or on the roof.

“That’s how he is.  I won’t bother him.  I’ll go talk to the district representative, instead, if that’s alright,” Tempera said, looking my way.

“If the coast is clear,” I said.

“Most people have cleared out of the main hall,” Crystalclear said.  “The ones who are hanging back seem like the types to be doing it for good reason.  Parents with kids, teenagers hoping to get a glimpse of the heroes they came to see.”

“That’s positive,” Tempera said.  “I’ll give them a glimpse then.  Thank you, Victoria.”

“I’m going to get a glass of water and get my head straight,” Fume Hood said.  “I’ll catch up with the rest of you in a minute.”

“Don’t go running off,” Tempera said.  “Get your water, take a minute, but come back after.  I don’t want you to throw yourselves to the wolves.”

“I won’t,” Fume Hood said.

“Or whatever variant on that plan you might be thinking.  I can see you trying to lead the enemy way from us,” Tempera said.

“I won’t,” Fume Hood said, annoyed.

“It wouldn’t work anyway,” Crystalclear added.

“Your future sight telling you that?” Fume Hood asked, her annoyance becoming something more bitter.

“I don’t see the future like that.  You know that.  But I do know that they’re mad at all of us.  Our fortunes are intertwined, and their hate is- it’s not very targeted.”

“Not hate,” I said.

They looked my way.

“It’s easy to see it as hate, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot,” I said.  “It’s not that.  It’s blame.”

“Blame,” Fume Hood said.

“I don’t think it’s a reflection on you.  Humanity is hurt.  It’s hurt in a way that makes it a little bit animal.  Reactive.  They’re snapping at any target that presents itself, because the hurt is fresh.  They’re taking that hurt and they’re looking for anyone they can put it onto.  You…”

I trailed off.

“We presented ourselves,” Tempera said.

“Not in a bad way,” I said.  “This isn’t your fault.”

“I’ll get my water,” Fume Hood said, curt.  She didn’t wait for a response, heading into the adjacent room, further from the front of the building.

Once Fume Hood was gone, Tempera nudged Crystalclear.  “Keep an eye on them?”

Crystalclear nodded.

Tempera gave me a nod before stepping out the door.

“Is Fume Hood going to be okay?” I asked.

“Who knows?” he asked.

“Trouble still isn’t imminent?”

Crystalclear shook his head.  “At least fifteen minutes off.  I’m thinking we should go get a better vantage point, see if I can’t spot any troublemakers.”

“Watch out for my guys,” I said.

“Watch out for what?”

I glanced at the door.  “Blame.”

“Got it,” he said.  “I shouldn’t stick my neck out or draw attention to myself, then?”

“Not unless I’m there.”

“And where will you be?” he asked.

I looked at the other door.  The one Fume Hood had taken.   “I was thinking I’d get a glass of water.  Unless you think that would be overstepping.”

He looked in the direction Fume Hood had gone.  His voice was soft as he said, “I have no fucking idea.”

“I’ll catch up with you,” I said, clapping a hand on his shoulder in passing.

The area adjacent to the conference room was a kitchen, set up with multiple stovetops and long counters.  Catering-focused, at a glance.  The stoves were of different makes and models.  Scavenged.

Fume Hood was standing by the sink, a glass of water in hand.  She looked at me, her eyes barely visible with the surrounding mask and the overhanging hood.

“Can I grab some water?  The bus ride was warm, even with the windows rolled down.”

She filled a glass, then slid it along the counter to me, so it met me halfway as I made my approach.

“What was the plan?” I asked.

“The plan?”

“Corporate?  Sponsored?  Ideology-driven?  There are a lot of those nowadays.  Move forward, rebuild, hold to the past, unity in strength, religion…”

“No ideology,” she said.  “No sponsorship.  No business partnerships.  I’m not even sure what we would have done about the money.”

“That can be hard,” I said.  I drank my water.

“It wasn’t supposed to be easy.”

I finished my water, then approached the sink to get more.  Fume Hood turned around, leaning against the counter just beside me.

She said, “It was community focused.  Serving the area, hometown heroes like the old days.  I thought of it as community service, in more than one way.”

“I like that,” I said.

She shrugged.  “I’m not sure if there’s anything to like about it.”

“It’s a good idea.  It sounds positive.  Maybe it’s worth trying again later.”

“It won’t come together again like this later.  Tempera is pretty good at this whole thing, and she needs to do the cape stuff, so she’ll find a team to join.  Crystalclear will get poached because decent thinker powers are in demand.  Longscratch… I don’t know why he’s even here.  Tempera suggested it to him, for some reason, he accepted for some reason.  He’s upset it fell apart.  Next time, he’ll just say no.  He’ll steer clear so he doesn’t have reason to get upset again.”

“Mover psychology?” I asked.

“I don’t know about that stuff.  I just know he’s a weird mix of wants and needs and he’s really cool when things are good and he’s impossible to understand when they aren’t.  Which they aren’t.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“You wouldn’t be sorry if you knew,” she said.  She stood taller, stretching a bit.  She tossed the empty glass between her hands.  “It’s my fault.”

“You orchestrated this?” I asked.

“I hurt a pregnant lady and she lost her child and I don’t even feel that bad about it,” Fume Hood said.  “I turned myself in, but it was because people thought I’d become a PR problem for capes in general.  I’d run out of friends and places to run to.  It seemed like the only way to get things to cool down.”

The glass smacked against each of her hands as she tossed it back and forth.

I drank my water, still watching her.

“I’m pissed,” she said.  “People are making such a big deal over this, and I can’t bring myself to see it their way.  It was an accident.  I told the civilians to sit and stay put, and this stupid-”

She stopped there, clenching her fist.

Fume Hood continued, “-stupid fucking woman.  She ran right to where I was shooting out a display window, gets knocked on her ass, breathes in the gas.”

“I wonder what she was thinking,” I said.

“I’ve wondered that every day since.  I’m mostly caught between thinking she wanted to get hurt and lose the baby, it was so blatant, or that she thought the broken display window was an escape route, even though there were others she could have run for,” Fume Hood said.  “I was so pissed.  I shouted at people to take her outside and get her some fresh air, even though I knew it made everything harder with the robbery.  They’d contact authorities, we’d have to protect ourselves, whatever.  I thought I was pretty fair.  She got medical attention and shit.”

“Could have been worse,” I said.

“I shouldn’t have pulled that robbery at the mall.  I know that.  But it’s not one of my big regrets.  Her being a stupid fucking idiot isn’t one of them either, obviously.”

“You turned yourself in after that.”

“The heat got too much, like I said.  And- and I was tired, you know?”

Her voice had cracked on the ‘tired’.

She sounded tired now.

“It had been years, trying to get by.  A lot of it was fun.  The drugs, the robberies and mercenary work, the adventure, new places and really interesting people.  Some shitty people, lots of scary people, but they were always interesting.  Capes are interesting in a way you probably wouldn’t get if you didn’t know any for real.”

“I grew up with capes,” I said.

She stopped passing the glass from hand to hand, holding it in both instead.  “Did you?  Huh.”

I shrugged.  My glass was empty.  I put it on the counter and, finger on the inside, spun it in a circle, the bottom rattling on the metal countertop.

She continued, “Well, all I know is, the crime stuff started to feel like work.  The drugs stopped feeling like they were a plus and started feeling like they were something I had to do.  I was never addicted, I never craved it, I never had withdrawal after.  This analogy I’ve been thinking of is it’s like I had to go to the bathroom every half hour and who wants to do that, you know?  Who wants to keep interrupting their day for something they aren’t even enjoying anymore?”

“No idea,” I said.  “But I can see what you’re saying.”

“The cool people started dropping away.  A couple dead, others just stopped being cool.  High people are really boring to be around.  So like a genius, I thought hey, let’s just go to prison.  I made a deal.  I wanted a bit of an education, training at some job or another, safety, I didn’t want to be stuck in there too long.”

“How’d it work out?”

“Deal worked out fine.  Judge agreed, heroes agreed, it was one less parahuman on the streets that people were really upset about.  Jail isn’t fun, but it was what I needed, I think.”

“Shows character, I think,” I said.  “Realizing where you were at, where you were headed, and changing course.”

“I don’t have character,” Fume Hood said.  “It was selfish and self-centered.  It was me, me, me, I’m bored, I’m done with the drugs, I’m scared of being caught by angry people, I want this deal, I want some education.  I don’t and I never cared about that pregnant idiot.”

She met my eyes as she said that last bit.

Challenging me.

I spun the glass on the countertop again.  “The community service hero stuff?”

“Me, me, me,” she said, her voice quiet.  “I thought it gave me the best chance of dodging any lingering heat.  Ha.”

I took my finger away from the glass.  It spun in a circle before settling with a rattle.

“I don’t buy it,” I said.

She shrugged, tossing the glass into the air, catching it.

“You said before that you have real regrets,” I said.  “And you can call yourself selfish, but I think the dots connect here.  Your reasons, your regrets.”

She tossed the glass into the air, caught it.

She did it a few more times.

“We should go,” she said.  “Check on the others.  Do our part.”

“We should,” I said.

The water from the faucet we’d used deposited a fat droplet on the metal bottom of the large sink, producing a hollow sound.  Neither of us budged.

“I got friends into the soft drugs and I egged them on instead of stopping them when they got themselves into the harder stuff.  I regret that, I turned myself in for that, even though I was supposed to be serving the punishment for the pregnant woman.  For other stuff, more on that level.  I turned myself in for the” -she took a deep breath, as if to signify magnitude- “years of being a low to mid tier nusiance.  For being tiresome.  And because I was tired of it.”

“I’m not a priest,” I said.  “I don’t have the power to say some words and absolve you.  It’s up to society to decide how angry they are and how they come to terms with it.  It’s up to you to decide how willing you are to face your deeds.  When it comes to me… I can say I respect a lot of what you’re saying.   I definitely think you should own up more to what you did to that woman, stop calling her stupid.  It’s not a point in your favor.”

Fume Hood nodded.

“Honestly,” I said, “I really like the community hero idea.  I’d really like you to try it again, after a bit.  For that to be your way of working through it all, from influencing your friends to hurting that woman.  We’re dealing with blame, not hate, and blame finds a place to roost eventually.  There has to be another shot at making this happen.”

“Blame seems like too small a word for what Crystal was saying.”

“Blame can be big,” I said.  “Blame has led to the ruin of nations.”

She nodded.  “That sort of helps, actually.”

“I’m glad to have sort of helped.”

“Blame can become something else, given time, can’t it?” she asked.

“It can,” I admitted.  “I’m spooked at the idea it will.  For now, just… be a hero,” I said.  “Don’t walk away from this sort of thing for good.”

“You guys keep saying stuff to me, like, don’t run off, don’t sacrifice yourself, be a hero, as if it’s implied I’ve got ideas I haven’t said out loud.”

“You’re a self-described shitty person and an ex-villain.  We’re not allowed to be suspicious?” I asked.

That got a half-smile out of her.

“Come on,” I said.  “I’m getting worried about my guys and I’ll get yelled at by my boss if I leave them to their own devices for too long.”

“This is your thing, then?” she asked.  She followed me as I left, setting her glass next to where I’d left mine.  “You joined the junior-PRT to convince shitty people to be less shitty?”

“On the most basic level, I got into this because capes are what I know,” I said.

“Because you grew up with them.”

“Yeah, but keep that under the lid for now,” I said.  “I’m not broadcasting it to the world.”

“Lips zipped.”

I pushed the door open, stepping back into the now-empty conference room.  “I want to help.  I could have helped with construction or farming or whatever else, but like I said-”

“Capes are what you know.”

“Yeah.  I knew so many great people and I don’t know if all of them made it, but I want to be in a position to help them through whatever comes next.  I want to figure things out, because the lack of answers is what fucks us over, and fucks them over.  I want to talk to people like you, if you happen to be on the fence, so maybe you land on the side where you’re more likely to help out those really cool, great people.”

“I thought you junior-PRT kids were all about training so you can go after the monsters.”

She’d created a hard green sphere, the size of a billiard ball.  She tossed it between her hands as she had the glass.  It smacked against each palm.

I answered her, “Don’t get me wrong, but I have pretty strong feelings when it comes to the monsters.  I’m pretty far from being okay with them.”

She gave me a sidelong glance while opening the door to the main room.

“But I don’t think you’re one of them,” I said.  “Sorry, but you’re safe from me.”

She threw the ball to the right, but instead of smacking into her palm, it curved in the air, orbiting her hand in a long ellipse as a moon might a planet.

“What a relief,” she said.  She was smiling a bit more, now.

The smile faltered a bit more as we faced the situation at hand.

Some of the police had come inside.  My guys were standing near the windows, looking out.  Some were talking to the police.

A share of the crowd had remained behind.  Community leaders, possibly.

Fume Hood hung back as I approached them all.

“You’re in charge?” a police officer asked.  He had a mustache.  It bothered me, because I’d never really got mustaches, barring the truly awesome ones.  This was lip decoration, bristly and at odds with how his hair was combed back and close to his head.

“Yessir.  I’m Victoria, I take my orders from Instructor Gilpatrick at Wayfair High School.”

“They said you told them to follow our orders?”

“Or to keep a lookout for trouble.  There’s still people here?  Is there a problem?”

“No,” the officer said.  He sighed.  “I don’t know what to do with them.  Yours or with the others.  Situation seems to be resolving itself, but the teenagers in uniform are insisting it isn’t.”

“The capes say it isn’t,” I said.  “I’d believe them.”

“Huh,” he said.

I took a deep breath, exhaling slowly, while the officer took a look around at the situation.

“Haven’t you talked to them?” I asked.  “The capes?”

“A little bit,” he said.  “Not recently.  I don’t really know how.”

“They’re people,” I said.  “Capable people who want to help.”

“They’ve got the eye thing, and the masks.  One doesn’t have eyes at all,” he said.  “He has these crystals.  He pulled one out of the top of his head earlier, and it made a wet sound.  It was in so deep it should’ve been inside his brain.”

“They’re people,” I said, again.

“It’s disconcerting,” the man said.

I wanted to say things to that, but I bit my tongue.  I could hardly criticize when I’d been talking to Fume Hood.

I’d just- I’d really hoped for better.

“If you need me to be a liason, let me know,” I said.  He didn’t give me an immediate response, so I called out to the squaddies.  “Get back from the windows, guys!  The working theory is a bomb, heavy impact, cape power, or something like an earthquake, and you don’t want your nose pressed against the glass when it comes!”

They shuffled back.

“Bomb?” the officer asked.

“Yeah,” I said.  “Can you get everyone here clear of danger?”

“To somewhere inside or further outside?”

I looked around.  Crystalclear and the others hadn’t come to find us, so I was left to imagine the danger wasn’t super imminent.  Inside posed risks.

I didn’t like making the calls, but I said, “Outside, but hurry it up.  If there’s any remaining crowd outside, get them further back or get them to go.”

“Alright,” he said.  “Makes sense.”

He whistled for the attention of his people and the crowd that had gathered closer to the front door.

While he handled that, I looked at the others, “Where’s Jasper?”

“Still out there.  He has Mar and Landon with him.  The crowd is in their way.”

I hurried to approach the window.  I could hear a commotion behind me, as others entered the room, but my focus was on the commotion outside.  My view was briefly blocked by the cops and the people they were leading outside and across the street to our left, away from both the building and the lingering protesters.

“Victoria,” Crystalclear said, behind me.  He was with a small few members of the community center staff, including the district rep, and he had Longscratch and Tempera with him.

He would be here because trouble was imminent.

“How soon?” I asked.

“Two impacts in a couple of minutes.  Six or seven.”

Two.  Six or seven minutes gave us a window to act.

I watched the scene in progress through the window.  Jasper wouldn’t make it to the front door in two or three minutes.  Some of the protest had dispersed, but a lot of it had spread out from the square of grass, sidewalks, fountain and trees just in front of the community center, dotting the streets.  A share of them occupied the street Jasper needed to come down to reach us, and a lot of them had their back to him.  He honked, not for the first time, and one of them gave him the finger.

“I’m going to help Jasper out, get us our bus so we can drive out of here without being mobbed,” I said.  “Is there a side door?”

Crystalclear pointed at what would have been the south side of the building, to my left.

“Go there, stay clear of windows.  Protect my people, keep them clear of danger.  The moment there’s real trouble, they’re just high schoolers and should be treated as such.  High schoolers- you guys protect Fume Hood.  Protect the capes.  Be good.”

“Do you need help?” Tempera asked.

She couldn’t help.  She would cause more problems than she fixed, being in costume.

No.  I shook my head, heading to the front door.

Was this an emergency?  Yes.

Did I like using my power?  No.

I marched toward the bus, glaring at the first person in my way.  I activated my aura.

“Move,” I said, and I pushed out with my power.  Heads turned, noticing.  Maybe they would put their finger on why they’d noticed.  Maybe not.  I was nudging, here.

I could see the man’s reaction.  He took a partial step back.

I stepped it up a notch, not with more use of my power, but by raising the volume of my voice.  “Out of the way!”

He got out of the way.  That and me drawing nearer made it easier for the next person to come through.

“Bus!” I called out to Jasper.  “Get moving!  Side door to the right of the building!  South side!”

People looking back at the bus and back to me had more pressure to deal with.  That was easier.  They got clear of the bus’ path.

The one who had given Jasper the finger, though, he had just a little bit more to prove.  I put my hands on him.  I pushed him, and he resisted.

I pushed him with my aura, small, closer to center, a pulse of intimidation just for him, to break his posture and resolve.  My hands pushed him the rest of the way.  He landed on his ass.

He wasn’t wholly out of the way, but Jasper was able to drive up on the sidewalk.  His door was open and the stairs leading up to his seat were there.  I hopped up, grabbing the bar that the driver used to climb into the seat, hanging off the side.

“Things okay?” he asked.

“They’re about to be not okay,” I said.  “We’ve got four or five minutes, probably.  I want to be gone by-”

Jasper’s two passengers, Mar and Landon, were at the window behind Jasper’s seat.  They were looking out and over my shoulder.

I turned to look.  In the crowd, a man was standing there, shuddering.  People were backing away from him.

He wore a black hooded sweatshirt and black pants, and he stood so the hood hid his face.  His arms were at his side, vibrating.  Head, arms, body and legs all moved like he had a paint shaker wedged up his ass, moving more violently by the second.

Building up to something.

“Take cover!” I shouted the words.

Some people did.  They ran, they sprinted for mailboxes, for trees.  But it was too open an area for everyone to find something.

I threw up my personal forcefield, shielding Jasper, my arm out toward the windows the other two were looking at.

The man in the crowd exploded, showering the crowd with chunks of bone, flesh, and a mist of blood.  More than should have been contained in a human body.  Some of the windows in the bus had cracked, and my forcefield was down.

The people over the square of grass, around the fountain, on the sidewalks and the streets surrounding the explosion all stood, calm.

Streaked with blood, they looked around, every single head turning left, then turning right.  All in unison.

“Drive,” I said.

Jasper stomped on the gas.

Further up the street, the cops that had been evacuating people from the building and across the road were standing near the street.  They’d been touched by the gore-explosion, and now they were drawing their guns.

“Don’t hit them!”

“I’m not going to hit them!” Jasper called out, swerving so the side and then the rear of the bus was between us and them.

It hadn’t been five or six minutes yet.  It couldn’t have been.  The building hadn’t been hit yet.

I climbed up higher, standing on the headrest of Jasper’s seat to reach a higher point on the bus, looking over the roof.

Where?

The worst possible location.

An eighteen wheeled logging truck was coming down the road.  The front had been reinforced with metal braces.  It was coming from the direction of the water, only four hundred or so feet of road between the waterline they’d started near and the community center, but it was going full speed, straight for the side door.

“Fuck me.”  Jasper’s voice.

Even if Crystalclear saw-

“Hit it!” I called out.

“What?  Are you insane?”

“Hit it!  The others are waiting on the other side of the door!”

I scrambled to get in position.

“Trusting you,” Jasper said, and the bus picked up speed.

You shouldn’t, I thought.

I had one partial glimpse of the inside of the truck.

Multiple costumes.

And then the impact.

There was no way to process the series of collisions that followed me hurling myself down between the logging truck and the school bus.  My focus was on deflecting the impact, clawing at the logging truck with everything I had to try to put it off course, before the bus made contact and hopefully moved it further.  As the two vehicles came together, I extended my whole body, trying to push them apart in a way that would keep the collision from being the head-on sort that might kill Jasper.

In no particular order, the school bus hit the logging truck, the logging truck  hit the school bus and the wall, and I, my forcefields down, hit the ground rolling.

I came to a stop and lay where I was, face down.  I felt the sting of the scrapes where I’d come into contact with the road, and waited for the real pain to start.  I wanted to know where the real damage was before I moved the wrong part and made it worse.  My ears rang from the sharp noises and impacts.  Playing dead helped, too, because the villains were rousing, opening the door of the truck cab, glass tinkling down to the street below.

“What the hell?” someone asked.  They were younger- probably teenager.  I couldn’t pinpoint if they were male or female.

“Are you okay?” a deeper voice asked.  The nature of the voice made me think brute.  “Any injuries?”

“I think I have whiplash,” the teenager said.  “I wasn’t expecting that.  What the hell?”

“You were intercepted before impact.  It looks like teenagers in uniform.  With a bus.”

“I can see that,” the teenager said.

“You missed the side door you were supposed to drive through.”

“I can see that too,” the teenager said.

“I can’t tell what you’re looking at, Blindside.  Let me know if you need help.  Snag?”

“I’m fine,” was the response, a rasp.  I heard metal creak.

“Your arm isn’t,” the teenager said.  They would be Blindside, going by what the Brute had said.

“I’m fine.”

I heard the sound of someone hopping down to land on the street, not all that far away from me.  Metal struck the road shortly after.

I only saw a glimpse of him.  Work boots, a long coat that hung down low enough that it almost looked like his legs were only two feet long, and arms long enough that his wrists made contact with the ground.  The hands rested flat on the road, fingers splayed.  He wore gauntlets.

I wanted to see something more than just his feet, but as I started to raise my eyes, looking through the hair that had come loose from my braid, my eyes were forced down, until they were staring at the road.  I heard the scrape of another person’s feet as they climbed down from the truck to the street.

“My fucking neck,” Blindside said.  The person in question.

Try as I might, I couldn’t look at them.  My eyes and head refused to cooperate and do what was necessary to put them in my field of vision.

“Don’t complain,” said the Brute.

“You weren’t on the truck.  You don’t get to tell me what I can or can’t complain about.  Fuck, I wasn’t expecting that hit.  Did both K.C. and Nursery fuck up?”

“The timing was wrong,” a woman said.  Nursery, I assumed.

There were so many of them.  The Brute, Snag, Blindside, Nursery, and K.C.- I really hoped that K.C. was the mass-master I’d seen in the crowd.  If they weren’t, then there were six of them in total.  Six and the crowd that the exploding parahuman had control of.

We had four capes on the inside, me, and a bunch of high schoolers, some of whom had guns.  None of whom, cape or student, that I wanted involved in this conflict.

The five or six attacking capes wouldn’t be attacking like this if they weren’t sure they could win.

“Don’t be stupid,” Snag said, his voice a rough growl, volume raised.

He wasn’t talking to me.  He was directing that at Jasper and the other two.

Drive away, I thought, willing Jasper to think the same.  Be okay, drive away.  Leave me.

I heard the chugging of the bus, the battered engine protesting as the vehicle started to reverse, pulling away.

At the edge of my Blindside-limited field of vision, Snag’s metal, long-fingered hand lifted from the ground.  He leaped toward the bus without making the movements necessary to jump.  I didn’t want to move my head and risk being seen just to see him land, but I heard the metal-on-metal sound, the impact of a heavy body on the hood.

Every set of eyes, mine excepted, had to be on him and the retreating bus.  It was an opening, and it was an opening our side opted to use.  The side door of the building opened without a sound.  Fume Hood and Crystalclear were in the doorway.

Crystalclear threw a chunk of crystal at the ground, and the chunk passed through without sound or apparent impact.  Fume Hood had six green orbs with her, all around her hand.  She sent one out in the direction of the bus, then, a moment later, sent a second.  Both exploded, off to one side.

Crystalclear’s shot passed through walls.  Tempera had let me know that.  Apparently, it needed to pass through walls, or the ground in this case.  He’d thrown it into the ground, and a moment after Fume had released her two shots, both landing, Crystalclear’s shot emerged from the ground, an explosion of vapor, glass splinters, and fragments of road.

One of the villains, the Brute, only laughed.

Fume Hood paused, her four orbs around her hand.  Her head was turned so she could only see me with one eye- Blindside’s power was limiting them there.

Through the hair that had fallen over my face, I could see Fume Hood look at me.  Making eye contact.

I couldn’t see the villains, so I knew the action was risky.  I had to hope they were more focused on her than on me.

I raised my head up and  motioned for her to go, moving one hand, swiping my fingers toward her.

The pattern was much the same as with her first shot.  One shot, then firing the remaining three all at once.  One to gauge how it would fly, then the rest to deliver the hit.

They slammed the door shut, just before the three near-simultaneous explosions.  The detonations were small and sharp, and produced a wind that blew my hair away from my face.  I held my breath.

The Brute laughed again.

I really didn’t want to pick a fight with four capes at once.  The bus was gone, the door was shut.

“This is going to slow us down,” the Brute said.

“You don’t have to sound so happy about it,” Blindside said.

The Brute chuckled, and climbed down from the roof of the truck, and in the doing, he put himself between me and Blindside.  It blocked my view of Blindside, and it gave me a chance to get a glimpse of him.  The ground smoked around where his boots touched pavement, and the smoke solidified into formations that looked like branches and twists of metal, all in an ashen white-grey.  His entire body was made of the stuff, as if he wore armor made of white-grey bandages made solid and immobile by resin, all of the ends curling up and away from him in horns or branches.

I knew him, even just seeing his legs.  Or I knew of him, to be precise.  Yeah, based on what I knew of Fume Hood’s group, they might be outclassed.

The big guy was the Lord of Loss.  There were two ways a cape could go with a name like that.  The most obvious was to fuck up just once, and forever after have people wondering out loud what he was thinking, taking a name like that.  Being called a loser.

The other way was to succeed and ascend the name, to take that name and make it a title.  The Lord of Loss had managed that.

He had been one of the villains in a big city on the West coast, and now he was one of the villains running a settlement on one of the corner worlds.  Was it Earth-N?  Not far from here, if it was.  He wasn’t top tier, as capes went, but he was A-list.

He was a Brute with Breaker flavor.  He cloaked himself in abstract forms, with a set selection.  I knew one resembled a bird, which he would have been using to fly alongside the truck.  He was versatile, big, strong, and his breaker power multiplied his efforts over time.  That multiplication played into how he flew, how he grew, and back before Gold Morning, a few occasions where he’d been able to slug away at a bank vault until he’d torn it open, or even drag a smaller vault away with him.

He turned his attention toward me, turning around and approaching me as the others backed away from the cloud of gas.  My chin jerked toward my chest as Blindside stepped out to the side, back in my field of view.

I would’ve rather had just about anyone else step close enough for me to get my hands on them.  It had to be the guy I couldn’t take out of the fight.

“Miss,” Lord of Loss said.  “Are you injured?”

I couldn’t pretend to be unconscious- I’d just moved because of Blindside.  I settled for an inarticulate, small moan.

Lord of Loss knelt beside me.  “Can you walk?”

I shook my head, keeping the movement small.

“Is it because your back is hurt?  Can you feel my hand, here?” he asked.

I felt his hand touch my knee.

I nodded, again, small.  I screwed up my face, feigning more pain than I was in.

I didn’t like this.  I didn’t like being so close to the guy, I didn’t like the scrutiny, the eyes on me, the attention.  I didn’t like being treated like I was an invalid.  I didn’t like suppressing my forcefield and aura.

I didn’t like being still.

It was easier to keep my composure if I was moving, doing.

“Blindside,” Lord of Loss said.  “Watch her.”

“What?”

“You were always going to be the lookout, with Kingdom Come helping.  We stick to the plan.  We’re going in, we’ll get our target, you’ll be the lookout, and you’ll look out for this junior soldier while you’re at it.”

“Pain in the ass.”

“Plans change,” Lord of Loss said.  “You’ll learn that sooner or later.  Our clients hired us to capture an ex-villain who made a bystander lose her child.  I don’t think they’d be pleased if we let another bystander get hurt while we carry out the task.”

“Yeah, no, I get it.  Just go.  Let’s get this over with.”

“Keep an eye out for the vehicle with the other soldiers.  They drove in Kingdom’s direction.  If they can’t get through or around, they might come back.”

“I get it.  It’s fine.  Go.  I can handle my shit.”

My eyes had closed, because it kept my head from being jerked around as Blindside kept compelling me to move to avoid seeing them, but I could tell when Lord of Loss moved away, as the bulk of his body ceased blocking the light of the sun above us.

“Snag,” Lord of Loss said.  “Any injury?”

I heard a cough.  “No.”

“Then go with Nursery,” Lord of Loss said.  He paused.  “Kingdom Come?”

Another pause.

“It’s time.  Move in,” Lord of Loss said.  “I can’t go inside, so I’ll take the roof, I’ll watch the other sides of the building, and do what I can to help.”

I cracked my eyes open.  Nursery and Snag were walking up to the door.  Lord of Loss was breaking into pieces, his arms spreading out as the wispy smoke formed into the ‘feathers’ of his wings.  He wasn’t fast at all as he started to flap, lifting off the ground.

That would be the downside of his breaker power.  It let him hit harder every time he hit something, and that included the beats of wing against air, but it took time.

Still, it let him move in the direction of the roof.  He paused, circling, as Snag raised one long arm and pushed at the door.  White paint leaked around the doorframe.

Sealed shut.

“This would be why I’m here,” Nursery said, her voice soft.  She began humming, and it was a lullaby sort of hum.

A music box sort of chiming joined the humming.

“Fuck that shit,” Blindside said.  I was the closest person to them as they stood somewhere near me.   I lay near the butt end of the eighteen wheeler, which had its nose in the wall of the building.  Nursery and Snag were at the door.  I wasn’t sure if Blindside was talking to me.

The humming seemed to be picked up elsewhere, and the music box noises intensified, with new notes and a higher tempo.  The area near the door blurred.  It was a window into another world, what had to be a pocket dimension, but for the most part it seemed unsure if it was our world or the pocket world.

An indoor setting, at a glance.  Beds and walls that didn’t line up with things in our world.

I felt Blindside’s hand on my neck.  They felt for my pulse.

“Asshole is invincible, and so he doesn’t even think to get your gun from you.  You’re lying on it,” Blindside said.  “If I roll you onto your back, will it kill you?”

It was a question I’d heard variants of before, in a tone I’d heard before.  A tone from someone that didn’t really care about me.

We’re going to roll you over now and check for sores.  Is that alright?

We’re going to wash you now.  Can you try to move this arm?

Can I get you anything?  Would you like water, or something to eat?

Condescending, caring more about themselves, feigning concern or consideration.  They just wanted to get on with their day.  Even the ones that did care lost patience sometimes.  Stubborn, aggressive people like me made it easy to lose patience.

I made myself be calm.  I exhaled slowly, and the exhalation came out as a shudder.  It wasn’t because I was hurt, but because the memories were close to the surface.

Blindside eased me onto my back, then I felt them touch my gun.

My eyes snapped open.  My arm lashed out, one swing, mindful that they were probably just a fragile human being.

I didn’t make contact.  Muscles in my arm wrenched, seized, and cramped as the entire arm locked up, just in time to keep me from touching them.

“Aha,” Blindside said.

I felt them grip my gun hard.  My initial fumble to grab the gun ran into the same problem.  My hand hit an imaginary wall.

The gun had a buckle keeping it in the hip holster.  They hadn’t undone the buckle, and they weren’t able to pull the gun free before I jumped up to my feet, backing a short distance away.  The hand pulled free.

I still couldn’t see them.  My head was turned to one side, I had a glare on my face, and I walked slowly, keeping track of them by keeping them at the very edge of my field of view.

I imagined I looked a little feral, pacing as I was, trying to track them with my other senses, being unable to make eye contact.

I moved my hand experimentally.  I hit the wall.

I couldn’t point at them, then.  I couldn’t hit them, based on my earlier issue.

“What do they feed you shits?” Blindside asked.  “You get thrown from a bus mid-impact and you have it in you to pull this?  I’m impressed.”

The dreamy blur was disappearing, the way in closing behind Nursery and Snag.  The background humming and chiming was fading.

I hoped the others were retreating, finding a place in the building they could hunker down until help came.

“Listen,” Blindside said.  “I don’t want trouble.  I don’t want to hurt a civilian.  I’m keeping to the rules.  Lie down, put your hands on your head, let me take the gun.  I’ll give it back when I’m done.”

“You’re going to kidnap Fume Hood.  I can’t stand by and let that happen.”

“You can’t do anything about it,” Blindside said.  “We’re going to borrow them, then we’ll be on our way.”

“Borrow?  You’re giving her back after?  Unharmed?”

“Yep.  Mostly unharmed.  The woman who lost her kid wants to have words with her.  Shout at her, make her feel bad.  She and some others paid a lot of money to make it happen.  Then we drop her back off somewhere near here and drive off.”

“For that, you drive a truck into a building and traumatize a crowd?”

“Intel said we were good to hit the building there, use that as our entry point.  Scaring her was part of the deal, so was fucking her over,” Blindside said.  “Stirring up the crowd, it doesn’t affect us much.  We live in one of the corners.  For her, it keeps her from finding any success.”

“For the sake of the woman who lost her child?”

“Yeah.”

“And she’s personally going to shout at Fume Hood there?”

“Fume Hood, Bad Apple, Horse Apple, Apple Cider, whatever you want to call her.  Yeah.”

I nodded slowly.

“Just lie down.  Let it be.  Give up the gun, stop fighting, we do our cape shit and you carry on with your day.  Police are under our control, nearest capes are half an hour away.  This is the way it is sometimes.”

“The files I got when I accepted this job said the woman in question died,” I said.  “The pregnant lady who lost her child.”

“Really?”

I nodded, my eyes still fixed on the ground, as close to Blindside as I could get.  If they moved into my field of vision, a forced movement of my eye and head would let me know.

“At Gold Morning.  Her home address was one of the cities hit hard.  No sign of her after the fact.  Authorities investigated when the word about this attack first came up.  Which leads me to think you’re lying through your teeth.”

“People visit family, go out of town for work, have stays in the hospital…  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to people who narrowly dodged being in the wrong place at that one critical time.”

“Stop,” I said.  “I caught you in one lie, let’s leave it at that.”

Blindside fell silent.

I heard a scuff.  My head turned-was allowed to turn- as Blindside moved around to my side.  I backed away a few paces.

I heard Blindside stop moving.

“Change your stance,” Blindside said.

“My stance?”

“Your head is turned as far to the right as it can go.  If I move to your right, the reflex is going to be to move your head further right.  You could snap your neck.  You’d probably close your eyes first, but I’d rather not risk it.”

I obliged, shifting where my shoulders were, so my left shoulder pointed at them.  I was aware that it made it easier to circle behind me.

“And raise your chin a bit.”

“Why?” I asked.

I heard the sound of Blindside moving too late.  I reached out to block or catch the incoming attack, and hit the wall where I couldn’t move my arm too far toward them.

Something swung at an angle that avoided my arm.  I brought my forcefield up just in time for the thing to hit me on the chin.  An uppercut with a blunt instrument that should have broken my jaw.

Before Blindside could recover or figure out what had happened, I went on the offense.  I couldn’t hit them with my hand, I couldn’t point at them, but if I swung my hand at them, elbow jutting out-

I felt muscles seize, locking up.  Blindside caught my arm, pushing me in the direction I’d already been going, and shoved me to the ground.  Martial art.

The blunt instrument-I saw the tip of a metal bat- struck down toward my shin.

It rebounded off of the forcefield as the field came back.  The metal sang.

“Ah fucking hah,” Blindside said.  “Fuck me.  You’re a cape.”

I lurched to my feet, putting some distance between myself and them.

Elbows didn’t work either.

The muscles in my arm and shoulder twitched with the lingering strain or sprain that had gone with the interruption.

I backed away until my forcefield came back up.  I drew in a deep breath.

“You’re full of surprises,” Blindside said.

I undid a buckle and pulled my armored vest over my head in one smooth motion.

“That’s not very surprising though,” they said.  “I can see where you’re going with this.  I’ve been at this a few years.  Some of the workarounds and tricks are getting old by now.”

I shifted my grip so I held the vest by the shoulder.

“The bus is back.  Are they capes in disguise too?”

The bus was back?  I couldn’t see without looking past Blindside, and I didn’t want to lose my bearings.

They were watching then?

Well, I imagined Blindside made it hard to watch.

I swung, using the vest as a bludgeon.  My arm stopped, but the vest continued.

I felt hands against my back, gripping the back of my top.  Another move, Judo or Aikido, stepping into arm’s reach, too close for the vest to hit me, trusting their power to keep my arm from hitting them, and throwing me to the ground.

I used my forcefield, and I used its strength to arrest the movement, stopping myself.  A bit of my flight.

With Blindside directly behind me, I drew my gun, and I turned to the right this time, swinging out with gun in hand.

“Nope,” Blindside said.  “That won’t-”

I dropped the vest, my hand going to my ear, and I fired the instant my arm stopped moving.  I shot the stone wall of the community center eight times.

The volume of it was such that I only barely heard Blindside’s exclamation of pain.  My ears rang- but the gun had to have been right next to the villain mercenary’s ear.

This was how I operated.  Even if I was trying not to be too blatant with others watching.  I was trying to consider more before I acted and took this route, moderating myself.

Shock.  Shake them on a sensory level.

I stooped low to pick up the vest, then swung it as I had before.   Blindside stumbled forward, much as they had before, into my reach, both forearms pressing against my back.

I’d had to moderate my aura, back at the hospital.  My mood darkened even thinking about that time, much as it had darkened when I saw myself in the mirror and remembered what I had been.

It took all I had to not let that darkness affect how I handled the aura.  I’d told myself, so many times, I wanted to be better.  Regrets weren’t worth anything if I didn’t let them drive me to do it better in the future.

For two months my aura had been one of the only real communication tools that I had, that didn’t require rounds of blinking and interpretation, or fumbling at a special keyboard with hands that didn’t map to how my brain thought my body should move.  I’d had some practice with the nuance of it.

Blindside was pressing against my back, and my aura was stronger the closer people were to me.  I controlled the aura’s expression to keep it small and more concentrated.

Awe.  Catch them on an emotional level.

Blindside stumbled back.

I spun around in the other direction, and bludgeoned them with the weight of my vest, using it like a flail.  They bounced off of the logging truck and collapsed.

Destroy was my usual third step.  I hoped I’d held back enough.  I’d wanted to disable only, but it was hard to know my own strength.

“You conscious?” I asked the villain.  My own voice sounded far away, distorted, hard to hear over the ringing.

I should have heard any response.  I didn’t.  Silence.

Blindside’s power didn’t let me check their condition, visually or otherwise.

I bent over them, fumbling, tracing their outline with the back of my hand, and finding walls even there, somehow.  I found their head, medium length hair, and tried to press the back of my hand against their ear.  My arm muscles seized.

I tried to use my knuckles to get into the ear, since I couldn’t use my fingertips without pointing or driving them toward Blindside, and I still hit the wall.

Blindside had been using something to communicate with others.  If it was a walkie-talkie, phone, or earpiece, it wasn’t anywhere I could access it.  Blindside’s power protected them.

The movement in the corner of my eye caught me off guard.  The bus.  The front corner was badly damaged, but it was chugging along somehow.  I hadn’t heard it approaching.  Where the paint had been black, it had broken away, revealing some of the bright yellow paint that it had once had, when it had been a school bus.

Jasper was waving his arm out the window, pointing.  I could hear his shouts, but the words were muted.

Incoming.

The villains would have heard the shots.

I looked up, and I saw Lord of Loss at the roof’s edge.  He’d turned himself into something resembling a tree.  A static emplacement, less able to move, but with roots that would extend into the building and secure his position so he could leverage his full strength.

He was growing by the second, smoke billowing out and solidifying into branching points.  He might just have the reach to hit us down on the street level, big as he was.

There were two entry points that weren’t windows.  Two courses of action stood out to me.  The first was to simply fly to a window, abandon Jasper.  I’d lose my job, but I would have to trust they would leave and be safe while I did what I could to help Fume Hood.

But I had something I wanted to ask.

I motioned for them to come, to hurry.

There were two doors into the building that I knew about.  The front door was no doubt seized by the mind-controlled army.  The side door had been painted.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to tear my way in and find out that the paint was a problem.

I didn’t want to charge in, only to find that they were securing their retreat.  They’d be looking for trouble coming from either of the entrances after hearing the shots.

There might have been a third way in.

I ran toward the nose of the eighteen wheeled logging truck, and I climbed over the nose of it.  It had collided with the wall, and it had done some damage.

Reaching up, I pulled at the damaged part overhead, and I leveraged the strength my forcefield provided to tear it away.  I pushed at another part, widening the gap.

The bus parked so its nose was tucked into the corner between the nose of the logging truck and the wall.  Jasper, Mar, and Landon climbed out of the bus.

“Are you okay?” Jasper asked.

I liked that it was the first thing he’d asked.  Gilpatrick’s five pound of gun speech taken to heart.  Less than five pounds of weaponry, more than fifteen pounds of protection, twenty five pounds of support and problem solving.  Jasper’s first thoughts were on the latter.  Those were supposed to be the priorities, the ratios.

“A bit of road rash,” I said, examining my arms.  “Too much adrenaline to feel the pain.”

Shadows shifted.  Lord of Loss had decided to detach from the roof, and was pulling himself together enough to start climbing down.

“Come on,” I said.

We ducked in through the gap, into a staff washroom.  I couldn’t see the source of the water, but it pooled on the floor below.  We passed through the door and into the hallway.

“So you’re a cape,” Mar said.  He’d been the kid who’d sat behind me on the bus and made smug insinuations about my name and background.

I gave him a dark look.  It looked like Landon was on his side.

“You’ve got blood on your upper lip,” Mar said.  “It looks like you’ve got a mustache.”

“Fuck off, Mar,” Jasper said.

I rubbed at my upper lip with the side of my hand, looking back to make sure Lord of Loss hadn’t followed us.

I could hear the humming and the music box.  Upstairs somewhere.  I could hear people in the building.

“Jasper,” I said.

“What?”

“I have to ask.  How much of this is setup?”

“Setup?” Mar asked, incredulous.

“I know I sound paranoid,” I said.  “I know if there’s a scenario or something, it’s probably against the rules to ask or answer, but I need the honest truth here, no bullshit.”

“You sound really fucking paranoid,” Mar said.  “Holy fuck, you capes are screwed up in the head.”

“Shut up, Mar,” Jasper said.

“Just answer, please,” I said, my eyes fixed on the end of the hallway, watching for the mind-controlled soldiers.  “Gilpatrick set me up with a bunch of new soldiers I don’t know that he can somehow vouch for, he insisted on them, and he sent me into a situation that was liable to get messy.  It doesn’t make sense unless I somehow imagine I’m being set up to fail.”

“Fuck me,” Mar said.

“It’s not really setup,” Jasper said.  “Gilpatrick explained before I left.”

I nodded to myself.

“They wanted to make sure you could be trusted.  They thought they’d stick you with some objective observers for three, four routine jobs, make sure you stuck to the rules, grade you, leave it at that.”

Objective.  I looked at Mar.

Yeah.  Right.

“And if I didn’t accept the job?  If I’d told Gilpatrick I didn’t want to do this patrol?”

“He really thought you would,” Jasper said.  “He told me that.  He was a bit stuck, caught between superiors saying he had to make you or he couldn’t keep you on, and thinking you wouldn’t.  Then you said yes.”

I frowned.  One impulse.  One spur-of-the-moment decision.

Cause and effect.  Every time I acted on impulse, bad things happened.  Some of the worst things had happened.  People around me got hurt.  I got hurt.  Two years in the hospital.

It was so much of why I’d wanted to slow down.

“I’m pretty fucking glad you said yes,” Jasper said.  “If it had been me in charge here I’m pretty sure most of us would be dead already.”

I exhaled.  Deep breaths.  I couldn’t fall into the mindset of dwelling on the past.

“You’re a good guy, Jasper.”

“I try,” he said.

I paused, thinking for a moment, listening to the noises elsewhere in the building.

I glanced at Landon and Mar.

“I’m a good guy too,” Mar said.

“Stay put,” I said, firm.

“You’re going alone?” Jasper asked.

“Yeah.  Just find a corner of the building to hole up in.  Hide, be safe.”

There was a balance to be struck.  I wanted to think I’d reasoned this through, as much as I could with the time constraint, the enemy no doubt closing in on the capes.  It was too risky to bring these guys with.

Going alone.

“Stay,” I said.  “Be safe.”

I sprinted off, raising my forcefield for good measure.

I entered the kitchen by another door.  Where I’d talked with Fume Hood.

Something exploded overhead.

I looked up.

Vapor, shards of crystal.

A moment later, there were two more small explosions, one after another, in a line.

Crystal clear, Crystalclear.

Not alone, then.  I hurried in the direction indicated.

I paused at one of the doors of the kitchen.  I’d come in one door and there were two more.  One led to a hallway with people standing stationary at the end.  Another led to the main room, where everyone had been seated before this had begun.

Crystalclear hadn’t signaled me further, and I took that to mean I was supposed to pause or wait.  People in the main room were moving around.  I peered through a crack in the door to see if there was an opening, a break in the ranks I could use to slip through or get something done.

I saw the people Kingdom Come had controlled had settled in, most finding seats in the folding chairs that had been set up throughout the room.  Some stood around the side or sat with their backs to the wall.  Others stood at the windows, watching outside.

The majority of the crowd was at rest.  The ones who weren’t had guns drawn.  The police officers were among them.

The officer with the sad mustache was at the front of the room, face streaked with blood.  He was talking, and I couldn’t see who he was talking to.

I listened to the conversation, two people talking against a faint background of a chorus of hums and music box sounds.

“You want me to negotiate with terrorists,” a woman said.

“We want you to do what is best for your community,” the police officer said, in a very different voice than he’d used earlier.

“By playing along?”

“This started with civilians, it involves cape on cape violence,” the officer said.  “If you cooperate, we’ll pay for damage done, we’ll extend our protection over your community in a way that keeps capes out of sight and mostly out of mind.”

“A protection racket?”

“Not a racket.  No money or expectations.  We’ll take the woman and we’ll tell you what to do in order to smooth things over.”

“I don’t understand why.  What does this serve?  Fume Hood was upfront about her history.  She wanted to serve her time in this way.”

“If we tell you why, will you cooperate?”

“I can’t promise that,” the woman said.  I was assuming she was the District Rep.  Why had she left the others?

“The City is like a pressure cooker.  The pressure is mounting and has been for a while.  Things inside are heating up and winter is fast approaching.  A number of great thinkers seem to think we need to vent the-”

“Vent the pressure?” the District Rep asked.

“Yes,” the police officer said.  “The-”

There was an explosion overhead.  Another of Crystalclear’s shots.  Two more, leading from one corner of the room and away.

I looked at the crowd, and I saw the person closest to me staring at me.

Kingdom Come knew, he’d seen.

“We’ll continue this conversation shortly.  You’ve got a cape with a gun inside the building.”

I backed away.  Crystalclear created more explosions close to the other door.  The people who had been standing guard at the end of the hallway, probably.

I retreated, ducking behind a counter.

They entered the room simultaneously, doors banging against the wall.

I ducked down, staying behind cover.

“You’re the one who fought Blindside?” the one at the door asked.  The police officer.

I remained silent.

“I don’t want to shed any blood that isn’t mine,” he said.  He was moving deeper into the room.  I heard the door squeak, peeked, and saw the corner of it.  It had been opened and was being held open.  Another person?

“Alright,” he said.

One of the issues of being a parahuman was that there wasn’t a history to build on or a peerage to draw from.  We had powers, yes.  Some of those powers were similar to the powers others had, but there were almost always tricks and caveats, strengths one person had that another didn’t.  I couldn’t copy Alexandria’s old tactics and style because my invincibility worked differently.  Timing was so much more important to me.

I could be shot, if my timing was wrong, or if their timing was especially right.

A person like Jasper could take classes in martial arts and get lessons on the range, and he could use tools and draw on the experience of millions of others who had bodies that worked like his did, a set of capabilities that were virtually identical to his own.

There was only one Victoria Dallon with Victoria Dallon’s powers.  I had to lean heavily on my own experience.  In exercising my abilities, there was a point beyond which I was the only person that could teach myself – nobody resembled me closely enough to be an instructor in how to fight, how to process, or how to or pass on their experience.

But my own experience was a drawback if I was caught in the moment, where I had to rely on instinct but that instinct pointed me right back to my old ways.

These people were innocent.  The officer, the others at the door.  Maybe some had been protesters.  Kingdom Come had no issue in using them, but I couldn’t hurt his pawns.

He could have moved them as a group, but he didn’t.  He moved like a chessmaster played chess.  One person taking a new position, pausing, checking the area, then another person moving.  The police officer in charge -chief or sheriff, I wasn’t sure-  had stopped in the center of the room.  Others were moving around the perimeter.

I caught a glimpse of one by the gun he was holding, and moved around the corner.  They all moved the same way when they moved, pistols held up, gripped in two hands that were dotted in drops of drying blood, pointed at the ceiling.  I saw the gun before I saw the rest of him.

The lullaby continued, faint and distant.  It wasn’t enough to obscure any scuffle I made.  I didn’t want to make noise, and whatever the movies showed, it was hard to crawl around while wearing boots and be sure to not make any sound.

I didn’t like flying.  I wasn’t confident in it like I had been.  Two years had passed in the hospital, and my sense of flight had been as disturbed as the movement of my arm or my attempts at vocalization.  It was supposed to be back, but it was a muscle I hadn’t exercised.

I wanted to fly, but it was tainted.

I raised myself off the ground, still hunched over, staying low enough that the counters would block me from sight, and used flight as much as light pushes on the sides of the cabinet to propel myself away from the advancing gunman.

I had other training to draw on that wasn’t self-taught.  There was what I’d learned and absorbed from time with family, but that whole experience was so full of pitfalls I barely wanted to touch on it.

The Wards.  I hadn’t been with them for long.  I’d absorbed some things from Dean, because I lived the cape stuff and Dean was willing to teach it.  I’d studied up and I’d taken the tests.  I knew the numbers and the labels.  I knew the approach formations for squads.  Simple, making conflict with parahumans as textbook as possible, black ink on white paper, sans serif.

In fighting that perpetual battle of trying to think things through and still act in time, the classifications were a nice shortcut.  Apply the label, assume what worked against most people of one classification, and if it clearly didn’t, it was still a starting point.

He was edging closer.

Kingdom Come was a breaker and a master.  He had a toggled state that changed the rules as they pertained to him.  Shake, blow up, and he was now a horde of people controlled by the bodily fluids on them.  Masters were second highest priority as targets, breakers were targets that required timing, often hitting them when they were in the state that they were weakest.

Kingdom Come made that complicated by not giving me a body to target.

They were closing in.  They’d crossed the length of the room and if I had to guess, four of them were standing within fifteen feet of me, guns held high, where it would be that much harder for me to lunge for the weapon.  He didn’t have perfect coordination of their movements, I had to assume, unless they were all doing the same thing, like when the crowd had turned their heads.

The old me would have dealt with this by blitzing them.  Hit each hard, fast, before they had a chance to react.  Some minor harm would have come to innocents, but the situation would be resolved.

The current me waited, staying silent, letting them get close.  One to my left, one in the middle avenue of the kitchen, between the two rows of counter-islands, and one on the far right, furthest from me.

As I set my boot down on the floor, ready to move, Crystalclear volunteered his help.  An explosion at the ceiling, a few feet behind the guy to my left.

He spun around, looking, and I took advantage, leaping over the counter, reaching for the gun he held aloft.  I seized it and his hands, and pulled both to the ground, where the counters kept us out of sight of the other two.

They started to approach at a run, each around one end of the counter, so they’d catch me on both sides, and Crystalclear offered another blast between me and them.  It took out the light fixture above, and cast the corner of the room into shadow, illuminated by periodic sparks.

It gave me a moment’s pause to think.  I ignored the man I’d brought to the ground, as I held his hands and the gun.  I didn’t even need my strength- only leverage and my body weight.

I couldn’t do anything to him that would put him down for good without risking hurting the real person.  I couldn’t do anything to Kingdom Come, as much as the rule for dealing with masters said I should.  He didn’t have a material body.

I used a burst of strength and tore the gun from the one man’s hands, sliding it along the floor so it went under one of the appliances.  I’d gone high to go after the first one, so I went low as I went after the officer to my left, throwing myself around the counter, using a bit of flight to help keep up my speed as I went around the corner.

I tackled him to the ground, holding him as we went down to keep the impact from being too hard.  I’d managed to get one hand around his wrist, and as he pulled his other hand away, gripping the gun, I seized that wrist too.

That left one in the middle of the room, one unarmed and on the ground and no doubt climbing to his feet, and one coming around the corner, gun ready.

I flew, sliding the police officer along the floor.  I twisted to hit the cabinet with my shoulder as we reached the end of the row.  That would bruise tomorrow.  I flew again, to move another direction, keeping away from the rest.

As we stopped, the officer had enough in the way of bearings to drop the gun.  He drew his knee toward his chest, and then kicked the gun so it would slide on the kitchen floor.

Someone stepped through the doorway, stooping low and catching the gun in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if they hadn’t had a greater awareness.

No, as much as he was a master in execution, he was also a breaker.  I had to be sensible.  It didn’t make sense to fight a breaker like this when he was in his breaker state.

I pushed the police chief away, and then, reorienting, I flew straight up, through the ceiling.  I felt my forcefield go down, bracing myself in case I brushed up against any wiring.

Second floor.  I checked my surroundings.  None of Kingdom Come’s people.  The lullaby music was louder.  The drones would arrive soon.  I moved, hurrying down the hall.

I found the stairwell.  I stepped into it, glancing down.  No sign of an approach.

I peeled some of the metal away from the railing, stepped back into the hallway, and leveraged my strength to twist the metal around the door handle, to seal it shut.  I knew there could be other stairwells, but at least this way I’d hear them if they tried coming this way.

Covering my back.

Priorities.  Blindside was as classic a stranger as I’d ever dealt with.  Out of action or out of consideration for now.

Lord of Loss was a brute.  Textbook answer when faced with a brute was to ignore them as much as they allowed you to.  It would take too much effort and it would take too much time when dealing with someone who couldn’t be decisively dealt with.

I could remember studying the PRT paperwork with Dean, doing the quizzes.  He’d said the rule for brutes had an unofficial second part.  That as much as you might try to put them off, they had a way of making you deal with them.

What had I said in response to that?  I was a brute on paper.

Had that been the study session we’d had in my room?  Dean would have been leaning against a pile of pillows at the head of my bed, Lyo-Leo on his lap, while Dean pretended to have him read the answers.  I’d been sitting at the foot of the bed, papers and books strewn between us.  Real homework and superhero stuff.

The door had been left open, at my dad’s insistence.  One foot tucked under me, I’d snuck my one foot across the bed until I could touch Dean’s knee, trace my toe along his leg.  Seeing if I could break his focus enough to make him mess up while reading aloud.

No, wait, that had been a few days after Dean had reminded me of the brute rule.  I’d been studying it with more interest because Dean was turning eighteen before long, and we were worried he’d get moved to another city, even with his family situation being what it was.  I’d seriously been considering joining the Wards and then the Protectorate, so I could follow him.

But I’d told my stuffed lion that he needed to remind Dean that brutes like me had a way of making you deal with them.  They could only be ignored for so long.

Normally clever Dean had been at a loss for words.  He’d grabbed my toe and squeezed it.  I’d wiggled it in his hand.  We’d been familiar enough with each other that the silence that followed didn’t feel bad.  Awkward in a good way, even.

He’d, after a long pause, found the clever thing to say, but he’d stumbled his way through it.  It would be my pleasure.  Pause.  To deal with you.

It hadn’t been long after that that we’d had our first night together.  It had taken two days of desperate attempts at coordinating schedules and patrols, for me to get out without family wanting to join me, for Dean to avoid the ‘sidekick’ situation and go out in costume without a Protectorate member joining him.

My heart hurt, thinking of Dean.  My knight in shining armor.

Still, I smiled as I remembered some of the emails we’d exchanged, my hands resting on the metal I’d used to lock the door.  Dean, ever the gentleman, had wanted to negotiate and check everything, from my comfort levels about X, Y, and Z to how my personal forcefield would factor into our time together.

I’d laughed at that, which had been the tip-off for Amy to realize something was up.  She’d-

And I’d gone and done it.  Let my guard down, tripped over the stumbling block, stepped on the emotional landmine.  There was only the hurt, now, none of the mixed, warm feeling that came from thinking about Dean.

I pushed it all out of mind.  It wasn’t the time for that anyway.  I was prone to getting lost in thought, even though it sometimes felt like every path led to the same, regrettable destination.

Dry, deliberate classifications.  Moving forward.  Deep breaths, when my chest hurt enough that breathing was hard.  Back to numbers and labels.  Lord of Loss and Kingdom Come had to be ignored, but I could trust that Lord of Loss would come into the picture somewhere along the line.  We still had to get out of here or deal with him.

Nursery was close enough for me to hear the hums and chimes.  Shaker, clearly.  Not dissimilar to Labyrinth from back in Brockton Bay.  The rule for dealing with shakers was to avoid fighting them on their own turf.

Snag was changer or tinker, possibly striker.  Those arms.  He had something mover going on with how he’d gone after the bus Jasper was driving.

Still, there might be another in play.

I ventured down the hallway, still feeling that ache in my chest, feeling acutely aware of my own body, the way clothes constrained me, reaffirmed me, yet every reaffirmation was a reminder that I needed that small reminder in the first place, and why.

My hand brushed against the wall as I walked.  The closer to the north end of the building I got, the more of the lullaby I could hear.  Multiple sources formed the humming, soft around the edges, each slightly out of sync with the others in a way that suggested they all came from different places.

I felt the texture of the wall change.  Smoother.  I felt and saw the difference in texture and color, respectively.  Gray and dusty rose shades, as if seen through a filter.  The wall had become a painted surface that felt as if it had been painted over many times, some droplets having run down the wall and set in place, ridges elsewhere where similar bumps had been painted over and become a faint rise.

I could hear her now.  Nursery.  A human’s hum, joined by all the others.  She was close.

Peering around the corner of the T-shaped junction, I didn’t see her, but I saw the change.  Her turf, as it was.  Dusty rose carpet, picture frames with simple things like animals and boats in grays, blacks, and pale pinks.  A crib, white, covered with a quilt.

I stayed at the edges of it, going further down the hall rather than turning the corner and venturing into her realm.  Only the wall to my right was affected.  A baby carriage draped in a blanket was parked beside a small bookshelf that had been stacked with children’s books and building blocks.  The cloth stuck as if it had been taped down or the sheer amount of time it had been there had nearly fused it to the fabric of the carriage, producing a tearing sound reminiscent of Velcro.  The carriage was empty, except for a vague oblong stain on the seat’s back and the seat itself.

When I left it behind, though, I could tell that there was humming coming from that vicinity, one of the soft, vague hums in the grander chorus.

Fuck me.

Every five or ten feet, there were more.  A car seat removed from the car, handle up, blanket over it.  Another crib, a much-used blanket tangled in the mobile, a child’s wagon.  Toys, clocks, wall decorations, cardboard boxes stuffed of baby clothes, marked for ages zero to three.  A rocking horse and more.

I was forced to venture further into it to get closer to the true sound’s source.

I saw her.  Nursery was a woman with an ankle-length dress, a shawl over her shoulders.  She clutched the shawl and rocked from side to side, speaking the inarticulate sounds rather than humming.

Beside her was Snag.  He was heavyset.  Two hundred and fifty pounds, at least, possibly three hundred pounds, and he wasn’t quite six feet tall.  That mass was made even bulkier by his coat, which was fastened closed, draping down to his ankles, where his boots were.  The sleeves had been modified to be longer, fitting the arms, which reached to the floor.

It was my first chance at seeing his face, though.  He had long black hair and a thick beard, both in the loose heavy-metal take.  His mask looked like he’d taken handfuls of black clay and layered it over the skin his hair and beard didn’t cover.  The mask created a kind of neanderthal brow with a permanent glare built into it; the circles under his eyes were so dark it was hard to tell exactly where the eyeholes of the black clay mask started.  It might have been thick rubber, melted to be in the crude shape needed, the texture left unrefined.

Nursery barely flinched as the door opened.  Fume Hood stuck her head and arm out, and she fired three projectiles.  One hit the slash of white paint that separated Nursery’s realm from the door, exploding into a cloud of gas.  Two hit near where Nursery and Snag were, going to pieces instead of exploding or producing gas.

The gas from the first shot expanded to fill the space between Nursery’s pocket world and the door at the end of the hall.

“Speed it up,” Snag said.

Nursery turned his way.  She wore a cloth mask with holes cut out for the eyes.  The cloth had a floral print and was bound close to her neck with a series of chokers.  She continued to mumble and hum, but she’d stopped rocking in place.

“Come on now,” Snag growled.  “We’re expecting trouble.”

The humming stopped.  The music box chimes that seemed to be plucking and pealing from the light fixtures and behind the walls grew noticeably quieter.

“Every time I have to stop to respond to you, Snag, it slows us down.  Be a good boy and be patient, trust us.  We’re making progress, even if you can’t see it.”

“If we get caught between the new player and Bad Apple’s team-”

Nursery let go of her shawl to reach out, placing her hand flat on Snag’s face, covering eyes, nose and mouth.  He pulled back, and I ducked back behind the corner, so he wouldn’t catch a glimpse of me.

“Hush,” she said.  “We’re safe even if that happens.  This is my sanctuary.”

“I will bite you if you touch my face again.”

“You’re not as scary as you pretend to be, Snag.  I know scary.  You’re just a man that’s dressing up,” Nursery said.  She sounded gentle, calm even after being threatened.

“Try me.”

“Please, hush,” she said.  “Let me do my work.”

“If you take any longer, I’m going to push for plan B.”

Nursery resumed humming.

No more feedback from Crystalclear.  The group at the end of the hall weren’t doing much of anything.

More to the point, I was rather concerned that the area of the building I was in didn’t entirely map to the layout of the building that I’d seen from the outside.  There was just a little too much room to either side of Nursery and Snag.

“Tell me the details,” Snag said, his voice growl-like even when he wasn’t threatening Nursery.  He’d walked a distance away from her and toward me.

A pause, long.  Snag picked up a child’s plush and threw it down the hall, bowling over a stack of thin hardcover books.

“Well, it’s taking plenty of time.  So is Nursery,” he said.  “What’s Kingdom’s status?”

Another pause.

“At this stage I’d settle for plan B,” he said.  “I’d pay for the property damage.”

Pause.

“They’re trying to buy time and it’s working.  Tell Blindside to hurry up.”

Blindside.

I stood with my back to the wall, listening in.  Crystalclear hadn’t communicated, but I wasn’t sure he could.  Fume Hood and Tempera weren’t doing much but holding the fort and delaying.

Nursery continued humming, but she piqued the last hum with an inquisitive note.

“Blindside faked being out.  Should arrive soon.  We’ve got some details on our mystery guest.  Dressed like one of the troopers I stashed in the room back there.  Untouchable but still wary of being hit.  Emotion control.”

The humming stopped.

I expected Snag to complain.  He didn’t.

I chanced a look around the corner.

Nursery had turned around.  She faced me.  Snag was gone.

I stepped out of cover, one hand on my gun, glancing around to see where Snag had disappeared to.

I wasn’t supposed to fight a shaker in her domain.  But here she was, standing with her hands clasped in front of her, defenseless.  She was also the only thing standing between me and the room where Fume Hood was.

“Let me through,” I said.

“No,” she said.

I pushed out my aura, as hard as I could manage.

She didn’t flinch.  It didn’t reach her.

That was what this was.  Her sanctuary was a protection from shaker effects.  She overrode everything by transplanting this screwed up baby decor into the area.

I wondered if I could hit her.  I looked around for Snag and didn’t see him.

“Wake up,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“Wake up, sweetie.”

The crib, a little red wagon with blankets heaped over it, and a carriage nearby jumped, rattling as if something had moved within.

I heard wet sounds.  Throughout the hazy altered space, the meaty squelching started to overtake the background hums.

I stopped in my tracks.

Things moved beneath the blankets.  She still hadn’t budged.

I turned around and ran.

Fuck this.

I got away as fast as my legs would take me.  I hit the wall at the end of the hallway and stopped myself with my hands rather than slow down with my legs.  I turned right and headed away, past more cribs, more strollers, baby seats and bouncy chairs, all draped in their blankets of varying types and quality.  Some tipped over from the violence of the agitation.

Yeah, no, whatever it was she was doing, I wasn’t going to mess with it.

There had to be other ways.

I escaped the area of Nursery’s shaker effect, stepping back into ordinary community center hallway.  I was in the opposite corner of the second floor from where I’d started.

Looking out the window, I could see the shadows cast by Lord of Loss’ branches.  Was it worth chancing flying outside, then flying into the room where Fume Hood was, when Lord of Loss could try hitting me or grabbing me?

There was another stairwell at the end of the hall- one I hadn’t sealed.

The door opposite it had something hanging on it.  A gauntlet with clawed fingertips, the ‘arm’ something electronic.  The claw’s tips were embedded in the wood of doorframe and door both.

“Hello?” I called out.  I glanced back to make sure Nursery and Snag hadn’t followed me.

“Don’t touch the door!” was the rushed response.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Patrol from the high school, community center staff,” the voice from the other side said.  “Don’t touch the door.  There’s a bomb!”

“I see it,” I said.

“They said they’d disable it when they left.  You said to stay safe, so we cooperated and let them lock us in.”

“That’s- that’s good,” I said.  My heart was still pounding from Nursery’s thing.  I was pretty sure Blindside wasn’t around, because my senses weren’t being affected.  “We’ll get this figured out.”

I wasn’t sure how.  They had a shaker power to override Tempera and Fume Hood.  Potentially Crystalclear and Longscratch as well, depending.  They had Lord of Loss sequestering the outside and they had Nursery taking over the inside.

In the same moment I turned my thoughts to Snag and his disappearance, two mechanical arms stabbed out of the nearest wall as if the wall was paper.  One hand caught me around the neck.  The other across the face.  I was slammed into the window, hard enough to shatter it and take out my forcefield.  Glass tinkled onto my head, into my hair, and all around me.

Before I could get my bearings, he hauled me into the wall.  My head cracked into the drywall and I felt it break with the impact.  His hand gripped my mouth and the length of his long forearm caught me around the throat.

I put my hands on his arms, and I felt the whir as machinery kicked into life.

As someone with the ability to control emotions, I was supposed to be harder to read and affect.  It was why I’d deflected Crystalclear earlier.

It was why Dean and I had gotten along.  Even why we’d been possible.

Maybe that resistance came into play.  Maybe it turned Snag’s power from an emotional uppercut to a mere slap.  Negative emotions poured into me like liquid from a syringe.

But a slap on an open wound could be enough to bring someone to their knees.  The walls came tumbling down, the memories flooding in, and my last coherent, present thought was that I hoped I wouldn’t maim or kill anyone in the meantime.

Snag’s power hurt, and it hurt in a way that had nothing to do with shedding blood or breaking bones.  Emotion.  My body still reacted, my heart rate picking up, breathing choked, adrenaline churning, hormones shifting.  My thoughts were scattered, thrusting me into a state where I could either only reel or I could grope for a position in familiar ground.

I didn’t want familiar.

Reeling meant trying not to think, letting it wash over me and through me, and not letting my thoughts go where the feelings pointed.  It meant I still had a metal gauntlet on my face and a metal arm pulled against my throat, and I was handling the situation with instinct.  Fight or flight.

Fight-

No.  I only barely stopped myself.  I’d kill him if I fought.

Fly then.

I pushed out with my aura, hard.  The flip side of my observation moments ago was true.  I was supposed to be resistant to hits to my emotions because I could deliver those hits myself.  Snag would be resistant to my aura for similar reasons.

He still let go, arms slipping back through the wall.  I had a moment where I thought about grabbing one of his wrists as it passed me, and I hesitated a moment too long.

I backed away, staggering until I bumped into the window next to the broken one.  My chest hurt as if I’d had my heart ripped out, and thoughts of Dean flickered through my head.  It was a continuation of my thoughts from earlier, one sample in a long, long series of thoughts I hadn’t let myself finish over the past few months and years that the surge of emotion was now filling in and pushing to the surface.

It was loss, if I had to put a name to it.  Nothing to do with the man on the roof.

It was me in the hospital, with Auntie Sarah and Crystal, not knowing what to say because Uncle Neil and Eric had just died.  Crystal had been hurt too, and the place had been so busy and crowded that we’d gathered in the small curtained enclosure where her hospital bed was.  My mom had been gone, trying to get news on my dad’s situation, and my sister-

It was going from that, the horrible feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, to hearing the curtain move.   I’d known it wasn’t my mom – she’d left only a minute ago.  It was as if someone had taken a want, desire, even a need equal to what I’d experienced in my childhood and early teens, when I’d wanted to be a hero, when I’d written letters to Santa and wished it during every birthday candle extinguishing and for every shooting star I’d seen from when I was four to when I was fourteen, if someone had gathered all of that feeling and compressed it into a single, concentrated moment of wanting it to be Dean coming into the enclosure to give me a hug.  And then not getting what I wanted.

The PRT staff member had come in to let me know Gallant had wanted to see me while there was still time.  Dean had.

Heart ripped out of my chest, just like that, just like this feeling here.  Losses, losses, fucking losses.  That ambiguous fucking word they’d used when they’d delivered the mass report.  Not deaths, not the ‘downs’ that were injured just enough they were out of the fight, just losses because they’d needed to be brief with the list of names so long.  Dean’s name had been on that list.

Where?  It had taken me three tries to get the word out.  They’d told me where, but I hadn’t traveled  a straight line to get there.  I’d zig-zagged, from doctor to nurse to PRT staff.  I’d asked people who had no cause or reason to know, tried describing her.  Asking, asking.  Pleading.

Where was she?  Had they seen her?  Where was the last place anyone saw her?  I need-

Where?  I shook my head, trying to rattle my brain and get centered in the present.  Where was Snag?  He’d disappeared into the next room.  I stepped forward, feeling unwieldy, and thrust my hand at the door, taking it off of the hinges, damaging the door’s frame.  Empty room.  Nowhere to be found.

My hand shook from the emotion, extended out in front of me.  I clenched it into a fist.

She’d been nowhere to be found too.

I’d arrived alone, no help to offer.  Too late to say anything or hear anything from him.  I’d choked on my words when it came to saying something to his parents.  There’d been this feeling like I couldn’t react the way I’d wanted and needed to, because his parents were there and they were somehow maintaining their composure.  Upset, yes, but they were wealthy and dignified enough they would do their crying in private.  They had weathered their losses years before and it had been the same then, according to Dean.  Now it was on Dean’s behalf.

What options did that leave me?  Break down into hysterical sobbing and act like I was hurting more than his own family was?  It might have been dismissed as the drama of a teenager and I hadn’t wanted that to be the final note on Dean and me, in their eyes, in the eyes of bystanders.

Like I imagined anyone in a relationship did, I’d wondered if we were in love, and then I’d known we were in love, and I’d grown close enough to him to wonder if he was a soulmate, dismissed the term just as easily as it had come up because it was silly and it didn’t matter either way, did it?  I’d received my answer on the question as I’d felt a part of me die during those long minutes of me trying and failing to say something to his family.

From that to home.  Southwest end of the city, our house mostly untouched by the attack.  To dad being ‘impaired’, mom’s word, and mom being business as usual, emphasis on business, because that was how she dealt.

To… a family member acting like they’d been replaced by a fucking pod person from another planet, gradually realizing that replacement had been a long time ago, and it was only now in context and crisis that I’d seen the alien-ness clearly, in the then-present and in retrospect.

Painful, in its own way, to have nobody to turn to.  The hurt had been there like a block of ice, melting too slowly when I hadn’t had any warmth to reach out for, not any less cold as the water pooled.  Not any less for the time that passed.  Just… more ambient.

This was like that.  Snag’s emotional effect was temporary.  The pain ebbed out, made my fingers feel numb and tingly, made it hard to breathe, and made me feel more physically weak and less coordinated than I should have been.

I stumbled a few steps, and reached out to touch the wall for support as I resumed moving, entering the room Snag had been in when he’d punched his arms through the wall.  It was reminiscent of a hotel room, but rustic enough it could have been a bed and breakfast.  Two small beds, a bedside table, a desk, and a flatscreen television sitting on a dresser.

He had a mover classification, I was pretty sure.  He’d used a trick to jump after the bus.  I made sure to look up, to avoid any ambush in case he jumped at me from the space between the top of the door and the ceiling.

The room was empty.

“Snag?” I asked.

No response.

My emotions were jumping around as I bucked the worst of the effect.  I wanted to have him to talk to, to pull me out of the mire of past feelings and into the present.  It made for a wild, disturbed kind of familiarity, almost a longing, as distorted emotions tried to find reconciliation with my head.  It ended up parsing him as if he was an old friend I was trying to reconnect with.  The same kind of weird emotional fixations that made Stockholm syndrome a thing.  Cult leaders and abusers used it.

When you had nothing, you groped for anything, even if it was the person who’d brought you to that point.

I’d reached out back then, too.  I’d turned to the Wards, because my mom had been the only person doing anything to keep New Wave in motion, the team had been falling apart, and I’d needed something.  Because the tests and briefings made me feel closer to Dean, reminded me of the study sessions.  Because the first time I saw her after the Endbringer attack, Vista had hugged me, because Dean, and it meant something to me that there was someone else properly upset for him.

“Guys,” I said, loud enough to be heard in the next room.

“Victoria?  Are you okay?” the voice was muffled.

I opened my mouth to respond.  My failure to form words reminded me of talking to Dean’s parents again.

I stopped myself, trying to focus and put myself in the present.  I took a deep breath that shook a little on the way in and the way out.

“Step back from the wall,” I said.

“Don’t,” was the immediate response.  “Don’t touch the bomb.”

“I’m not touching the bomb,” I said.  “Get away from the door and the wall to the right of the door.”

Snag had felt secure enough to stick his arms through the wall and not jar the bomb too badly.

I’d take his cue.

I put my arm through the wall, felt my forcefield go down.  I heard the exclamations.  Once I was sure I was good to move, I dragged it to one side, tearing a hole, felt one of the studs, moved it to the other side, and felt another.  About two feet of clearance between the studs.

I saw the faces on the other side.  Worried.  Angry.

The window shattered.  Snag reached through, seizing me by the throat.  He swung by one arm outside the building, dragging his other arm through the windows and slats, shattering them with explosive force, as he drove me toward the wall opposite the hole I’d just made.

I still had my forcefield up.  He hadn’t grabbed me that hard.  Flight and forcefield together helped to stop me in my tracks.  Floorboards shattered under me, and a window beside me broke as the force was transferred out.

Seizing his arm, I swung it like a bat, hurling him into the room.  I maintained my grip on him as I did it.

He touched the ground with one foot, then changed trajectory.  Dust fell from the ceiling as he landed on it, upside-down, his arm still extended my way.

I felt the machinery hum with activity, and tore the hand away, pushing it away from my throat and face.  The emotion effect grazed me, minor, but I hadn’t recovered from the last hit.

A small kind of loss, this.  The hit didn’t do what the first had, rounding out a memory.  It did buzz through other memories.  Ones that were more minor, that I’d never put to rest.

Being in the bus stop with my mom.  Weird, because it had once been a happy memory.  She’d been stitching up a cut on my forehead while I suppressed my forcefield.  The rain had been pouring, streaking the graffiti-covered walls of the bus stop.  A moment for just my mom and me.  She’d paused midway through the first aid to tell me that she was proud of me.  We’d got the guy we were after.  Then we had talked about how I’d have to change my hair for a short while to hide the stitches.  One of my first times officially out in costume.

It was a memory I kept going back to.  One I’d brought up several times in the hospital.  Bittersweet somehow, and it had become more bitter and less sweet over time.

It bothered me, brought me down just a bit, because it was something unresolved that had weighed on me, because I was already down a ways.

“Stop,” I said.  I didn’t sound like myself.

His hands freed, he reached back to his boot with one gauntlet.

He threw a trio of fat shurikens at me.  My forcefield blocked them, saw them bounce off, one landing on the bed, two falling to the floor beside me.

I kicked the bed to bring the more solid bedframe to where I could grab it, and rammed the end of the bed at the corner where he was.  The shurikens detonated behind me, and on the bed in front of me.  Something that wasn’t fire or anything of the sort.  Something jumped between them, like electricity but not.  Where it touched me, my heart jumped, my mind stumbled, and feelings welled.

All of the doubts, fears, and hesitations inside me magnified, multiplied.  It paralyzed me for the moment.

This, at least, was something I’d been trying to get a handle on.  Here, my resistance applied.

He’d dropped down to the ground before the bed struck him, landing on both feet, arms spread out, hands planted on the ground.  He sprung back using his mover power, landing with one hand and one boot near the ceiling and another hand and boot beneath and on the window as he clung to the wall.

With the damage I’d done to the bed already by using it as a weapon, the swipe I used to get it out of my way destroyed it, only the mattress surviving.  I still had to pick my way past a slat.

He seemed surprised that I was already moving.  After pausing momentarily in shock, he used the moment of me navigating the wreckage of the bed to spring off to the right, down the hallway.

I passed through the doorway, pursuing, and my head turned against my will.  I heard glass break, saw Snag vault through the window he’d broken.

He was nimble, for a guy that big, but it seemed his mover power was responsible for most of it, his mechanical arms only helping with the legwork.  He was strong in many respects for what I was gathering was a multi-trigger.  Robust tinkerings, what felt like a full-fledged emotion affecting ability, a decent mover power.

My attention was more on the other two further down the hallway.  Blindside, I assumed, and a hint of the pink and grey coloring to the carpet that might have been Nursery.

Blindside’s bat tinked against a solid surface as they loitered there.

“Damn it, Snag,” Blindside muttered.  “Running off and leaving us with this?”

“He’s a character,” Nursery said.

“You’re a character,” Blindside said.

I could hear wet slurping sounds and I couldn’t see what was making them because Blindside was standing close to Nursery.

“Stop this,” I said.  “It doesn’t end anyplace good.”

I didn’t hear the response, because Snag reached up through the floorboards, seized my leg, and hauled me halfway through the floor.  I might have gone further, but I braced myself with flight and forcefield.

It left me kneeling with one leg, the other stuck straight out and down through the floor, my hands on the ground in front of me.

I heard Blindside’s running approach.

Bat in hand, probably.  I pushed out with my aura, hoping to give them a reason to think twice, buy myself a second.

Lurching to my feet, I brought Snag’s arm up above the ground.  I reached down to grab his hand, and then kicked nearer to the elbow.

The mechanical arm broke off.  With a bat of my own, I shifted my grip to the wrist rather than the now-limp hand, and held my weapon out, waving the broken end of the arm in Blindside’s general direction.

No blood.  I’d broken it off far enough down.  That was good.

I was breathing hard, my heart was racing, and old wounds felt fresh again, but I was finding some equilibrium again.  I-

The arm I was holding self-destructed, or the emotional battery within it did.  It stayed in one piece and it dashed me to pieces.

Again, the ripped-out heart feeling.  Again, the heavy sense of despair.  Deeper-seated now, because I hadn’t recovered entirely from either of the other two hits, the big one and the graze.

I saw double, more than double.

Months and years of seeing double.  One eye on the computer screen beside me, watching the time, looking for chat notifications.  One eye on the television.  One eye on the door.

Twenty past two.  Fifteen minutes late.  I counted the minutes.  Twenty one past two.

Twenty two past two.  The sound from the television was almost abrasive, made to be attention-getting.

I wanted to say something, protest, and I didn’t have a voice.  The computer was in arm’s reach, but it was a herculean effort to get a message out.

The door opening and the wrong person being on the other side.  Just like with Dean.  It wasn’t the staff member who came on weekdays at two-oh-five when I had visitors.  It was someone else, with a face I knew, a name I didn’t, and a gentle voice that was telling me that another patient was throwing a tantrum and the facility was on lockdown, they had contacted my visitors.

My visitors, my family, had decided that because they didn’t know how long the lockdown would be, they would come another day.  It was a long trip.

I reached for the laptop, started to type out my message for the text-to-speech speaker, using keys that were oversized and spaced out, with screwholes in the middle of each key for knobs and joysticks to be screwed in for when other patients had their turn.  It was supposed to double as physical therapy for me, coordinating myself, making the effort to reach and reposition.

The staff member had apologized, then turned to go notify other patients, closing the door behind her.  I’d tried to vocalize and of course I’d failed.  It was too long and byzantine a way from lung to mouth.

The message had been left unfinished on my screen, only a few words of what I’d wanted to say.  Even completed, the statement wouldn’t have meant anything to the staff member, and they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.  All I’d wanted to express was that my family had missed the last two visiting days as well.

My eye had found the clock on the laptop, noted the ‘F’.  Friday.

One eye on the clock, watching the minutes.  One eye on the television.  One eye on the F, counting the days to Monday.  One eye for the email icon on the computer screen, waiting for the apology email that would come.  When it did, I would check the time, comparing it to other apology emails, to try and figure out if they were getting further apart, less.  To see if they would stop entirely, a prelude to the visits ceasing altogether, because it was easier to forget me than to do otherwise.

Something inside of me had broken at that.  I’d known it would cost me privileges.  Maybe even visits.  I’d known it would hamper or hurt other patients and staff across the hospital.  Ones who didn’t deserve it.

But I had nothing else.

I’d pushed out with my aura, as hard as I could, as far as I could.

I pushed out with my aura, as hard as I could, as far as I could.

Things had been happening while I was elsewhere.  The building shook.  The villains were gone.

“Victoria!”

Jasper.

He was with others.  I barely recognized them.  The heroes in particular took me a second.  The kid who looked a little bit flamboyant, hair gelled back, wearing what was almost a crop top, a beast’s upper face with fangs pointing down at his chest, the lower jaw and fangs on the belt, with diagonal slashes worked into either side of both parts of the icon, painted on his abs in a faint color that might have been missed in dimmer light.  Tempera with more of the white paint on her, a bit of blood.  Fume Hood was using one hand to press a bandage to her shoulder.  Crystalclear was missing more than a few chunks from his head.  One of his eyes was exposed now, peering from between one chunk that grew from the bridge of his nose and one that grew from his temple, very blue.

They looked frightened of me.

That was what my aura did, really.  Another of those contextual emotional things, like the Stockholm syndrome.  Awe and admiration if they liked me, fear if they didn’t.

Just fear, here.

“S-stop.”

Not my voice this time.  Jasper’s.

I stopped.

I trembled as I made myself get back to my feet.  I wiped my cheeks where they were wet.  My hair was a mess from being thrown around.  I used numb fingers to pry at it, undoing the tie.

“Christ,” Mar said.

For the first time, Jasper didn’t shut him up.

The building shook.  Daylight reached parts of the indoors it wasn’t supposed to.  This would be their plan B.  Property damage indeed.  Lord of Loss was tearing off the roof.

“We need to go,” Tempera said.

I nodded.  I looked back for the hole I’d made.  I saw the teenagers in uniform in the trashed room.  They’d opened the hole the rest of the way and filed out.  Now they stood as far away from me as the room’s boundaries allowed.

They would have seen me throw the bed.

“Yeah,” I said.  My voice sounded hollow.

The partial uniform I wore, still without the vest that I’d left outside, dusty  blood-spotted, it didn’t fit me anymore.  I felt choked by it, because I knew I’d just lost my job.

I led the way down the stairs.  I stumbled in one place where a trace of Nursery’s effect made the stair a different shape, carpeted when it shouldn’t have been.  Flight helped keep me from sprawling.

“You’re Glory Girl,” Landon said.

I’m not, I thought.

“People said you died when the Slaughterhouse Nine attacked Brockton Bay back in twenty-eleven.”

“Landon,” Jasper said.  One word.

The people who had been gathered inside were evacuating.  Kingdom Come wasn’t making it easy, either.  As they reached a safe distance, near where people had been protesting, they were gathering in offset rows, so we would have to move diagonally or zig-zag through their ranks to get past them.  A fence.

It was hard to tell what the villains were doing when Blindside was part of the group and they were already distant, but I could turn my head and see a bit of them out of the corner of one eye.  They were backing up, moving away without actually fleeing the scene.  Nursery was creating her effect.

The kids I’d brought with me were backing away, putting themselves  a distance away from us.

I looked up for the branches overhead and I didn’t see them.

“Watch out for Lord of Loss,” Tempera said, following my line of sight.

Where was he?

“He’s up there,” Crystalclear said.  “He’s changing.  Centaur?”

“That’s his combat form,” I said.  I still didn’t sound like myself.  “One of them.  It’s mobile.”

“I’ll keep the others busy,” Longscratch said.  He swiped one of the weapons he held, the buckler with the three swords mounted on the back, and three deep furrows appeared on the ground, stretching out beneath the feet of the crowd.

“Wait,” Tempera said.

Longscratch flickered, appearing momentarily at two of the points on the far side of the crowd where the furrows ended, before finalizing at the third.

“Help him,” she told Crystalclear, touching his shoulder, leaving white fingerprints.  “Fume Hood, stay close.  They’re still targeting you.”

Tempera moved her hand, and deposited what looked like fifty gallons of the white paint with black edges on the street.   We spread out as it appeared.  She moved her fingers, and it spread out.

“Tempe!” Crystalclear shouted.  He extended one hand out to the side, pointing.

The paint moved, a tidal wave, leaving a streak where it went.

I chased it.

Lord of Loss leaped from the rooftop.  Ten feet tall, a centaur in vague shape only.  His lower body looked more rhino-like, though the legs were longer, and he was plated in those same straps that looked like twists of smoke frozen in place, or wispy bands of metal that peeled away from him at the end.  He carried a heavy shield on one side, cut in a way that let its bottom left edge rest against the shoulder of his foreleg when he held it tilted forward, and he carried a heavy lance in the other hand.

His face was a helmet, the slits for the eyes and lower face were closed up, so the face was only a series of ridges where bands met and poked out, Y-shaped.  His hair was a mane of bands left to flow like smoke.

He landed in the streak of Tempera’s paint, and he lost traction, falling to one side.

The paint rose up and over him, then solidified.  He shattered it, lurched to his feet.  The paint liquified and rose up and over his legs, and he shattered it again.

Was it more easily than he’d shattered it the first time?

Actions he repeated were supposed to be stronger.

To give Tempera a hand, I threw myself forward at Lord of Loss.  Flight, forcefield up.  He twisted around and raised the shield, blocking me.  I still hit him hard enough to cost him footing.  Paint covered him, hardened.

He broke the paint, swung his lance around, hitting me with the broad side.

Forcefield down, impact dampened but not entirely broken.  I hit the ground and it hurt.

He broke through the paint yet again, found his feet, hit me again, this time while my feet were planted on the ground.  My forcefield came back up just in time to be broken again.

Yeah, that hit had been harder.

Fume Hood shot him, hit him in the face.  The paint crawled up to his upper body and joints, hardened there, trying to limit his movement, and he broke it again.

He laughed.  Then he hit me again.  I deflected the hit, swatting at his lance with one hand.

He was advancing, pressing closer to Fume Hood, and as much as I retreated, as much as I was sure Fume Hood was backing up, he had longer legs.

When he hit me yet again, pavement cracked beneath me, around my feet, the forcefield pushing the impact out and around me.  I almost lost my step backing away, with the cracked ground.

Each hit stronger than the last by a significant margin.

This was the point I was supposed to throw my hands up and surrender, or get out of the way.  If he decided to hit me more frequently, or if he lurched forward and kicked me with one of those feet of his after swatting me with his lance-

Crystalclear had turned around, was using his blasts on Lord of Loss now.

Loss, losses, losses, losses.

I threw myself forward, flying, seizing him by one leg, twisting, trying to knock him over.

I got him off balance, and then he hit me.  Only a moment of me holding onto him kept me from getting smacked into the ground with no forcefield.  I fell to the ground and scrambled out of the way of his legs.

I waited until my forcefield was back, then threw myself at him, bowling him over.  I tore at strips, peeling away at him.

In the background, Kingdom Come had abandoned his control over the crowd.  They woke as if from a deep sleep, and they seemed surprised by what was happening around them.  They fled.  Away from the brutes fighting, away from the chaos and the damaged building.

He elbowed me.  It took him long enough to rise to his feet again that I was able to get in front of him again.

I could do this.

I needed to do this.

It-

It wasn’t my day to get what I wanted.  I barely registered the sound.  A crack, coinciding with the noise of the crowd.  Lord of Loss went still.

My back had been turned, so I hadn’t been in a position to see it.

One bullet, from somewhere nearby.  Fume Hood on the ground, Tempera beside her.

It wasn’t my day to get what I wanted.

I’d frozen.  A lot of people had.

“Go to her,” Lord of Loss said.  “Help.  I’ll let you go if you let us go.”

Numb, I nodded.

“Let people know it wasn’t us.  This wasn’t our plan,” he said, behind me.

I flew as much as I walked, and dropped to my knees at Fume Hood’s side.  I put my forcefield up, tried to position myself where I could be a wall for her.

“Put your hands here,” Tempera told me.

I did, pressing down on the stomach wound.  Blood pooled out, covering the backs of my hands.

The crowd had gone still.  There was a murmuring, and people were drawing closer to watch and to see.

Reminiscent of Vikare.

In the background, Longscratch and Crystalclear had already apprehended the suspect.  A protester that had been in a building nearby.  Hunting rifle.  The villains were leaving.

“Not-” Fume Hood grunted.

“Not?” I asked.

“Not a good day,” she muttered, through gasps.

“No,” I agreed.  Very much agreed.

Landon had come closer, and was helping by getting the first aid kit out.  Tempera took the components.

“Not a good day for any of us,” Tempera said, giving the crowd a glance.

The sun was just starting to set when the police were wrapping up with us.  They’d had to arrive first, of course, the ones who had been on the scene were compromised, victims as much as anything.

Nobody Kingdom Come had affected remembered much of anything.  It was as though they’d fallen asleep – they remembered losing awareness, some reported briefly coming to in the middle of things as the building had shook or they had been knocked around, and they hadn’t really processed or understood much of those glimmers.

A few had reported me as a recurring image.

There was some concern that Kingdom Come might have absconded with someone or that not everyone that had been in the crowd was accounted for, but from what I could tell, it had been an all or nothing thing.  People remembered coming to, many of them dangerously close to a superhero fight in progress, but the recollections were hazy.

I sat on the sidewalk near the front door of the community center, aware that it was very late in the day.  The sky was orange-yellow now, with darkness on the eastern horizon.  The thickest parts of the clouds overhead were cast in shadow, zig-zags of darkness through the amber.

The heat of the day was subsiding, helped by the cloud cover.  Dust and sweat had left my arms mottled with grime and tracks where sweat had wiped it away.  I’d washed my hands after helping Fume Hood, and I’d realized I hadn’t gotten all of Tempera’s paint and the blood on the backs of my hands.  I was painfully conscious of the sweat, grime and blood, yet I couldn’t bring myself to go wash up because that would require attention to it.

Paradoxical, I was well aware.

I turned my attention back to the kids.  Making sure they were okay.  At some point where I had been lost in thought, Gilpatrick had showed up.  I watched until he glanced my way.  He raised a hand, and I raised mine.  Then he turned his attention back to the teenagers.  As it should be.

I’d figured I would be working late.  I’d just thought it would be paperwork and talking to the students.  I’d really liked that part.  It was fascinating stuff when it wasn’t so close to home.

I could relax some, seeing Gilpatrick.  Not because it meant great things, but because it meant I didn’t have to think about finding Gil after, getting the details, putting off hearing the news or delivering the essential details.

I put my hands behind me where I wouldn’t see the blood or the places where the paint had settled into the cracks, oil-black, and I leaned back, eyes closed, trying to focus on the voices and the sounds, on the breezy wind and the ambient warmth.

“I’m sorry,” Gilpatrick said.  He’d approached me.

I kept my eyes closed.  I said, “Are the students okay?  The others?”

“They’re fine.  Some have parents here, I’ve got a bus coming for the others.  Psychologically, emotionally, I don’t know.  It was scary and it was hard to know what was happening.  The staff of the community center are obviously upset about the building, but that’s not on us.”

I opened my eyes.

Gilpatrick wasn’t wearing his vest.  A sleeveless undershirt tucked into black pants, a sweatshirt slung over one shoulder.  Bald, bushy eyebrows, hairy, hairy arms.

“Jasper filled me in on most of it,” he said.  “He’s reliable when it counts, it seems.”

“He’s a good guy,” I agreed.  “There’s a reason I wanted him with me.”

“I get it now, I think.”

“If you want this project to be a positive thing, at least at our school, you’ll want more Jaspers.  You wanted a verdict on the kids you sent with me?  I wouldn’t put them in leadership roles.  Not if there are going to be capes on scene.  What I heard and saw wasn’t very positive, and if there were any who disagreed, they didn’t feel confident enough to say it out loud.”

Gilpatrick ran his hand over the skin of his head, not giving me a response.

My arms were tired from propping myself up.  I leaned forward instead.

“Alright.  Thanks.  Not good to hear, but I appreciate it,” he said.  “I’ll take that under serious advisement.”

“They follow orders, at least.”

“I was really hoping to have more hands to help out,” he said.  “Really unfortunate.”

Some parents were joining students who were talking to the police.  I watched them.  Parent and child side by side, parents concerned as they listened, getting the details at the same time the officers were.

“I am sorry this happened,” Gilpatrick said.  “I meant it when I said it.  I mean it now.”

“I gave my point-by-point retelling of events to the police,” I said.  I stared at my hands.  “Including the part where I was hit by a few emotion-affecting attacks.  It’ll take some of the responsibility off your shoulders, if anyone asks.”

“It’s not that important,” he said.  “Well, it’s important, obviously, thank you, but I don’t want to dwell on that.  If people make an issue out of it, I’ll handle it.  I knew what I was doing when I brought you on board.  That’s not what I want to talk to you about.”

“I stuck around,” I said.  “To be something like a guardian for the students who were acting as witnesses, making sure they weren’t pressed too hard or made uncomfortable.  I stopped when I realized being there was making some things harder, because they didn’t like being around me, or that it looked like I was trying to protect myself by inserting myself into things and influencing their testimony.”

“Yeah,” Gilpatrick said.

“I backed off, Jasper and Landon took my cues, I think.”

“That’s good.”

I thought that’d be the time he followed the thread of the conversation and got around to saying what he needed to say.  He didn’t.

There was a break in the convo.  More cars were pulling into spaces along either side of the ‘square’ of grass, sidewalk, and fountain in front of the community center.  Some more parents.

“Did they mention Fume Hood?” I asked.

“Only that she was taken to the hospital and all signs were good when she left.  Tempera was staying close to her.  Something to do with paint?”

No news then.  “Tempera stopped the worst of the blood loss.  She poured paint in the wound, shaped it, and solidified it.  We might have lost Fume Hood in another way, though.  We might not keep her as a hero after this.”

“Did she say that?”

“There was a brief twilight between when the pain meds kicked in and when the meds knocked her out,” I said.  I moved my fingers, felt how unlike skin the backs of my hands felt, stiff with the stuff I hadn’t managed to wash off.  I’d rushed, because I’d wanted to get back to keeping an eye on the students from the patrol group.

“Are you going to finish that thought?” Gilpatrick asked, his voice soft.

I closed my eyes.  “Um.  We chatted.  She said she was staying with a family member already, so she’d have someone to look after her if she needed it.”

Thinking about family pulled my thoughts in a few different directions.  I could have tried picking a safer one, but I wasn’t sure I was that on the ball, being as tired and discouraged as I was.

I went on, “Her brother cut ties with her when she went villain.  She was living in that area where all the building foundations were screwed up because they were rushed, and everyone had to leave the homes they’d just settled in, reached out to her brother, and she’s been staying with him, reconnecting.  It might give me some hope for her, having that positive influence, but she sounded pretty cynical about it all when we had the conversation right after meeting, before everything happened.”

“Cynicism is understandable, to a degree.  That’s where she’s at.  Where are you at, Victoria?”

“Similar to Fume Hood, really.  I wasn’t evicted because of rushed apartment construction, but I’ve been staying with my dad because it means we each pay half the rent, and I want to keep my options open with things being what they are.”

“I wasn’t talking about living accommodations,” Gilpatrick said.  “Your head, your heart.  Are there any lingering effects from the emotion effect?”

“For the last two years,” I whispered.

“Sorry?  I didn’t catch that,” he said.

“It’s gone.  It really sucked while it was in effect, but it’s gone.  Right now I’m in that heavyhearted, almost-blameless-but-guilty ‘morning after’ phase, where I’m reflecting on everything I did when I was under the influence,” I said.

“I know that well enough.  I’ve been hit a few times by those, back when I was a squaddie and squad leader.  And by you, once.”

“You asked me to,” I pointed out, looking up at Gilpatrick, “and this was a bad one.  Snag?  I read about a thing online, keeping tabs on who was out there.  I’m pretty sure he’s part of a new multitrigger cluster.  It might have been amplified by the tinkering, if it wasn’t, then something else was in play.  That didn’t hit me like it was a minor or secondary power.”

“Sorry,” he said.

He wasn’t a bad guy.  I wanted to be angry but I couldn’t justify it.

“I’m sorry it happened like this,” he said.  “It wasn’t supposed to be anything like this.  I thought it’d get a bit nasty with the civilian protesters but I didn’t think it’d be anything like this.  Not the capes, not the gunshot at the end.”

I hadn’t either.

“Jasper said you guessed why I sent those students with you.”

“Yeah,” I said.  I climbed to my feet.

“I’m especially sorry for that,” he said.  “If it was up to me, I wouldn’t have ever tested you like that.  It wasn’t wholly up to me.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Everyone,” he said.  “No-one.  It’s complicated.  Wardens and the hero teams are being pressured to be mindful of who is out there, touching base, and they reached out to some of the other patrol groups with concerns.  They wanted to coordinate, so teenagers wouldn’t be out interviewing or exposing themselves to anyone dangerous.  School got to talking, and they got into CYA mode.”

“Cover your ass,” I said.

“They wanted to be able to say that they’d made a reasonable effort to check that the parahumans the students were exposed to were reasonable and safe, in case anything happened down the line.  I could have kept quiet about you, but…”

He trailed off.

“I wouldn’t have asked you to,” I said.

“…I didn’t get the impression you wanted me to, either.  You weren’t being secretive.  I don’t want to operate that way, either.”

“No.  I wouldn’t want you to,” I said.

“You know I can’t keep you on the staff,” he said.

I nodded.

There it was.

Fuck.

I hadn’t been super attached to the job, but… fuck.

“Using power on kids, the contention about possible conflict of interest, undue influence, danger.  I think things will stay at that, I don’t think it’ll follow you.”

I nodded.

“There’s a dim chance of a student claiming emotional distress because of your aura and pursuing things in court, I’ve already talked to one officer to get them on board and we’ll get something in writing.  I’ll vouch for you and for the events as Jasper described them, one hundred percent, if you end up needing someone to stand for you.  None of this was you.”

“Courts are a million years behind as it stands, and getting further behind every day we don’t have an established system of government,” I said.  “By the time things get that far it’ll be forgotten.”

“That is a factor,” Gilpatrick said.

I wasn’t worried about that side of things.  I was hurt, but I wasn’t worried.

“Do you need a hand getting things cleared out of the office?” he asked.

I shook my head.  I didn’t want to think about that.

“Can-” I started.  I cleared my throat.  “Can I get back to you on that?  I’ve- I guess I’ve got a family thing I should go to.”

“For sure,” he said.  “Anytime outside of usual school or work hours.”

I might have flinched in a way that he saw, hearing that.  I knew why he’d said it, but it still sucked to hear.

I started to walk away.

“Victoria,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Any favor you need, reference letter, intel, if you need Jasper or some other trustworthy faces in uniform to lend a hand with something…”

“Thank you,” I said, my voice lighter and more cheerful than I felt.  “I’ll be in touch.”

I took off.

⊙

There was something very human about the desire to gather around a fire.  Power rationing meant every household had only a certain amount, more if there were more people in the house.  Conversely, there was a lot of cheap firewood.  Streetlights flickered on, and many house lights went off.  In back yards there were three other families on the city block that were gathering around fire pits.  Two of the families were playing different kinds of music, but it wasn’t too discordant.  There were trees in each yard, front and back, and that helped to dampen the sound.

The entire street smelled like burning charcoal, and the light from the streetlights was just a little bit hazy with the ambient smoke.

It was a nice neighborhood, even if it had what I felt was the artificial quality.  Houses with character, sufficiently different from one another in style and architecture, but still so new that they looked more like movie sets than lived-in places.  Time and clutter would wear at those crisp edges.  Paint and attention would turn fences of new wood with the occasional edge still frayed from the saw’s touch into something more personal.

This was the flip side to the hostility and the street-wide gap between protester and community center.  Boyfriend and girlfriend sat on an outdoor love seat together, arms around each other, bathed in fire’s warmth.  Friends sat and talked, beers in hand.  Kids in another yard played with their dog.

With the path I’d taken, I reached the backyard first.  The driveway was wider than it was long, crushed gravel, with room for multiple vehicles, and a fence stretched from the house at one corner to the garage at the other.  My mom had invited neighbors, so it was a thing, even if things had reached a more relaxed point.

My dad sat on one of the lawn chairs, fire pit in front of him with the fire having burned down to just glowing coals.  The barbecue was to his right, lid open, tiny bits of meat clinging to the grill.

He was forty-two but looked younger.  The fact that he was as fit as he was played into it- only the white in his beard stubble really gave it away.  His hair, too, was short.  He was the only one who hadn’t put a sweatshirt or jacket on, owing to the proximity of the two heat sources- he was wearing a t-shirt that was form-fitting in a way that showed off his muscles.  Pretty darn gross, given he was a dad,  my dad, and he was supposed to dress his age.  I would have insisted on clothes that hid any sign of muscle at all, really, had I been given a say.

He looked relaxed though.  As relaxed as I’d seen him in a while, really, and I’d seen him passed out on the couch back at the apartment.

I was aware that my mom had seated herself so that two neighbors sat between her and my dad.  Where my dad had dressed in a t-shirt and sports pants for the occasion, she had dressed up.  Just a bit of lipstick, her hair short and styled, a ruffly sort of white blouse and pencil skirt.  She’d kicked off her shoes earlier in the evening, leaving them beneath her chair.

I was aware of the distinction in how they’d dressed, too.  In another time, before everything, there would have been more… connection, I supposed.  Each influencing the other, until they matched more.

She was smiling.  She folded one knee over the other, then a moment later was undoing the position, both feet on the porch again as she leaned forward, laughing at something someone had said.

I smiled.

The lights were on inside the house, too.  The door was open, and people were scattered through the space between the stairs down to the porch, the back hallway, and the kitchen on the other side of the hallway.  The room to the left of the hallway was dark.  The neighbors kids, I presumed, teens to twenty-somethings.  I saw a glimpse of Crystal stepping into the unlit room, tried to catch her eye with a raised hand as she looked toward the window, and failed.

I did get the attention of someone sitting next to my mom, though.  She touched my mom’s arm and pointed.

I remained where I was, arms folded on the top of the wooden-slat fence, chin on my hands, while my mom approached.

“You’re hurt,” she said, touching my arm, where the road rash was.

“Scuffed up.”

“Did you get the other guy?” she asked.  She reached out and touched my hair, fixing it by moving strands to one side.

“No,” I said.  “But there were five of them.”

“Do you want to talk about it?  I’m interested.”

“Not really,” I said.  “Today-”

My breath caught.

“-Kind of not a good day,” I said.

I saw her expression change, even though the light source was behind her.

“What?” I asked.  “Don’t tell me you didn’t save me the dessert you promised.  Looking forward to that is pretty much the only thing keeping me going right now.”

She smiled, touching my cheek, before kissing me on the forehead.  “I saved you dessert with extras to take home, in case you want pie or pastries for breakfast tomorrow.”

“You’ve done your duty then,” I said, with mock seriousness.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve failed a mission,” she said, in the same tone.  She put her hand on the side of my head.  “You missed Uncle Mike, I’m afraid.”

“Oh shoot,” I said.  “I barely remember him.  How is he?”

“He’s Uncle Mike.  He brought his wife and your cousins, and I haven’t child-proofed at all.  It was… something, in the brief time he was here.  A whirlwind of chaos and emotion, and then he was gone.”

“Ah, too bad,” I said.

In the background, my dad was trying to get my attention.  He’d sat up, and didn’t look relaxed anymore.  He offered me a small smile.  I acknowledged him by lifting one hand up from where it sat on my elbow, in a mini-wave.

“Thank you for coming,” my mom said.  “I know the family stuff is hard, after everything, but it means so much to me.  To everyone.”

“I’m here for the desserts,” I said.  I amended it to, “…and a bit for family.”

My mom lightly rapped me on the side of the head before stepping away.  “Come on in, then.  Meet people, I’ll get your pie.”

As she stepped over to the gate by the garage to unlock it, Crystal stepped out into the backyard, joined by a few others in our age group.  She glanced in my direction, saw me, and froze like a deer in the headlights.

Her arms folded, defensive, like something was wrong.

She mouthed words at me, and I couldn’t see her face well enough at a distance to know what the words were, but I could draw conclusions from context.

My dad’s posture, still sitting upright now, both feet planted on the ground.

My mom’s earlier change in expression.  Even the wording-

I backed away from the fence a few steps.  My mom froze, the gate only slightly open.

“You invited her,” I said.  I wasn’t talking about Crystal.

In reaction to that, my mother didn’t look confused, she didn’t negate.  She looked toward the house, to see what I’d seen that had clued me in.

Whirlwind of fucking chaos and emotion indeed.

“You invited her,” I said, again.  More emotional this time.  “She’s in the house?”

My mother rallied, composing herself.  Now she looked confused.  “I told you I invited everyone.”

“She’s actually in the house,” I said.

I backed away again, and my mother threw the gate open, taking several steps on the driveway, stepping on crushed gravel with bare feet.

I raised my hand, indicating for her to stop.  She continued forward.

I threw my aura out, one push.

My mother stopped.  Crystal stopped in her tracks, already at the fence.  People rose from their seats.

“I thought you knew,” she said.  “I very clearly said everyone.  It was supposed to be a family reunion with everyone getting together again for the first time in… in a really long time.”

“You’re a lawyer,” I said.  “You’re too clever with wording to be that fucking stupid.”

“Please,” she said, with a tone like she was the one who needed to exercise patience and restraint here.  “Let’s keep things civil.”

I couldn’t even look at her.  I trembled as my eyes dropped to the ground.

“I’ve made mistakes, as your sister has,” my mother said.  “She’s been doing so well.  I want to make up for past wrongs and be a mother to both of you, like I should have been from the beginning.”

I looked up, staring at her.

The lipstick, the composed outfit, the words, the everything about this all seemed so false now, so forced.  I didn’t even recognize her.

“You’re kind of fucking it up,” I said, in the kind of whisper that was the only tone I could manage that wasn’t outright screaming at her.  My hands were clenched at their sides.

“That’s not fair.”

“You’re kind of really fucking it up,” I said, in the same strangled whisper.

“Victoria-”

“You’re fucking it up, mother,” I said.  “You’re fucking- you’re fucking- did dad play along with this?”

“I told him everyone was coming.  You, your sister, Crystal, Uncle Mike.  He was surprised, but… pleasantly surprised.”

Dad too, then.  There was that heart-wrenched-out feeling again.  I screwed my eyes shut, inadvertently squeezing out tears.  I was aware her neighbors were seeing.

“Don’t- don’t get emotional, Victoria,” my mom said.  “Please, I didn’t do this to hurt you.  The furthest thing from it.”

“You fucked that up too,” I whispered.

“Stop saying that.  Please,” my mother said.  “It’s the age of second chances, she’s worked very hard to get to this point.  I’ve talked to people who worked with her and she’s getting back into her routine in a good way.  I want all of us to have a second shot at this, and do it right this time.”

I shook my head.

“Leaving things as unresolved as they are is doing more harm than good.  To both you and to her.”

“So you thought you’d invite me to dinner and surprise me with her, and you thought there was nothing I could say or do because people are here?”

“You’re putting thoughts and conspiracy in my head,” she said.  “I want you to be sisters again.  I want us to be a family again.”

“That’s not for you to decide,” I said.  “Holy shit.  Holy shit.  Holy shit.”

“Please, don’t wind yourself up.  You’re getting out of breath.  Let’s communicate.  Please.”

I was getting out of breath.  I gulped in a breath of air.  “You’re aware I can’t set foot in that house again, right?  I’ll see her looming in the shadows, potentially another surprise invite.”

“I want you to find reconciliation, so you wouldn’t feel upset even if she did appear by surprise.”

“I can’t accept any invites from you,” I said.  My face started to contort, and I forced it back into something more normal before I lost the ability to see my mother or focus on her altogether.  “I can’t grab dessert from you or do anything with you again because she might be there, surprise.  I can’t trust you.  How can I trust you again?”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.  I did not realize that was where things stood.  You’ve been doing so well, and she’s been doing well.”

“How-” I started.  I gulped in another breath of air.  My voice was a whisper again when I managed to speak again.  “How do you not realize when you saw me at the hospital?  How do you even think rec- how do you think this is ever possible?  How does-”

I closed my eyes.  More tears.

“How does Dad?  How could you see me then, how could you- how- how-”

My chest hurt.

“Crystal-” I said, I looked toward the house.

Crystal was still on the porch.  Standing guard by the back door, red shield up.  She watched me talking with my mom over one shoulder.

“I told Crystal the same thing I told your father.  She was skeptical but she agreed it was for the best.”

I didn’t trust my mom’s version of events on that.  Crystal at least had my back in this moment.

I tried to find words, and I didn’t have the oxygen.

“Catch your breath.  We can talk this out.”

I worked at it, swallowing air.

“I’ll wait,” she said.

The sound of her voice made it harder, not easier.

When I spoke, my voice was very small.  It gained more strength as I went.

“How can you have not been there, missed visits, or come to the visit and spend more time talking to doctors than to me because it was hard to be around me?  How can you have come to see me then, and have had to avert your eyes mid-conversation with me, and found that hard, and not realize that I had to live it for two years, and had that be a million times harder for me?”

“I know it was hard, honey.  I get it, I really do.  But you can’t dwell in the past.  It’s not good for you.  You can’t carry that.”

“You say that, when you still sleep with the lights on,” I said.

It was her turn to not have words.

“That’s different,” she said, finally.  She didn’t say how it was different.

I stared at her.

“I want all of us to conquer our demons,” she said.  “I think you want that too.”

I continued to stare.

Finally, I said, “I want that too.”

“We can talk this out.  We can find things we all want,” she said.  “We can make inroads on this.”

She looked nearly as upset as I felt, even as composed as she was.

But in the end, and I’d known this from very early on, seeing her with- with her, she wasn’t a whole and complete person.  She tried, she put on a good face, but my mother had been broken long, long ago, and with the way she’d put herself together, she retained only sufficient compassion, understanding, and empathy for a very small number of people.  For one daughter, at most.

Second chances.  Second go-around, and I wasn’t that daughter, this time.

“In the interest of putting my demons to rest,” I said.  “I’m going to keep my distance.  Don’t call, because I can’t trust a thing you say.  I’ll figure out what I’ll do about Dad later.”

“Don’t,” she said.  “Nothing gets better if you close off communication.”

There were things I wanted to say to that.

It wasn’t worth it.

I turned to go.

I heard the gravel under her feet as she gave chase, and I pushed out with my aura, hard.

“Do not use your power on me, Victoria Dallon.  That has never been okay, and it doesn’t work anyway.”

I drew in a deep breath.  There were things I wanted to say to that, too.

I settled for, “Let me go.  If you follow me, I’m liable to hit you with something harder than my aura.  I’m pretty sure that would work.”

It might have been a good line, if I hadn’t been choking back emotion as I said it.

I walked away.  I didn’t trust myself to fly when I couldn’t see straight.  Having a panic attack in the air made for an embarrassing moment.

People stood in rows at the fences that bounded their yards, staring and watching.  I wiped away my tears once, then resolved not to shed more, not where people could see.  I set my jaw.

In the background, I could hear my father’s raised voice.

Breathe.  Center yourself.  Move forward.  Plan.

I thought about what I’d need to do next.  I couldn’t go back to the apartment I shared with my dad.

For the time being, I only walked, out in the general direction of the water.  Streetlights lit up in advance of imminent cars and as I stepped onto the streets, turning off otherwise.  Here and there they would turn on for wildlife, illuminating a lost deer or raccoon mid-scurry down the road.  We’d set ourselves up so abruptly that the animals were still confused.

It was getting cooler.  I wore my skirt, my clothes from earlier.  My forcefield shielded against the wind, which kept it from lowering the temperature even further, but it didn’t do a lot to shield me from the ambient heat or lack thereof.

I tensed as I heard running footsteps behind me.  I stopped in my tracks.

Not Crystal.  She would have flown, and she would have set down well in front of me.  She wouldn’t have chased, maybe.

Her, then.

I didn’t want to look.  I didn’t want to speak to her.

I pushed out with my aura, instead.

Another footstep, closer.

Our mother’s daughter.

I threw my arm back and to the side, a backhand swipe.  I tore through lawn, through slabs of sidewalk, and the edge of the road.  Dirt flew across the street alongside clumps of grass and chunks of sidewalk.

A long pause, and then I heard the footsteps again, running.  This time the other way.

⊙

Gilpatrick jumped as I appeared in the doorway of his office, nearly knocking over a paper container of noodles in red sauce that rested on a stack of paper.  Paperwork I would have been helping him with, had the day gone differently.

“Victoria?  What’s wrong?” he asked.

So it was that obvious something was wrong.

“I need to call in a favor,” I said.

Okay, hearing my voice, I could get why he’d known.  I sounded like another person entirely.

“If it’s okay,” I said.

“Of course it’s okay,” he said.  “What’s wrong?  Are you cold?  The temperature dropped steeply tonight.  What can I get you?  Sit.”

He stood, circling around his desk.  I backed away a little as he did, which was his cue to stop.

I wasn’t sure how to respond, how to ask.

“By the way,” he said.  “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no need to count.  I consider you a friend, and I feel like a piece of shit for setting you up to fail like that.”

“It’s not that,” I said.  “I just need a place to stay tonight.  While I figure some things out.  I’ll be gone before the students arrive first thing.”

I noted the hesitation before he responded.

“Sure,” he said.

“You paused.”

“Only because it’s not really a great place for staying overnight.  You could come to my apartment, but that’s-”

“I kind of want space to think,” I said.  “Offer’s appreciated.”

“There’s an issue with power rations and temperature is supposed to drop a few more degrees, and this place isn’t insulated well.  It was a bitch last winter.”

“I remember,” I said.

“Of course,” Gilpatrick said.

He kept giving me very deeply concerned looks.  Almost pity.

I really hated those.  I’d had a lifetime’s fill and then some.

“Okay,” he said.  “I’ve got a space heater right by my desk here.  You’ll want to be careful if you’re leaving it running for a while, fire hazard.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said.

“There are blankets we stowed in the locker rooms that you can use if you want to sleep.  You could get something serviceable if you gather a bunch.  I laundered them not too long ago, too.”

“I know where to find them.”

“There are candles too, in case the power runs out.  But again, fire hazard.”

“It’s okay,” I said.  “I’ll be careful.”

“Okay,” he said.  “You sure you don’t want company?  We can talk it out, if you haven’t eaten I can go grab something, or…”

I was already shaking my head.

“Sure,” he said.  “I was needing an excuse to go home, this will do.  Unless maybe I should stay around?  You could settle in upstairs, and I’ll be all the way down here, you can have your space to think and you can still have me to talk to in case you decide you need it.”

“No,” I said.  “Don’t let me keep you.  Go home.  You’ll have angry parents to talk to first thing tomorrow, once they’ve figured out what happened and had time to get angry.”

He frowned.  “Yeah.”

“Please,” I said.  “I know where everything is.”

“Yeah,” he said.  “You sure you’re okay?  You’re not going to…”

He trailed off.

“If I was going to do anything, I’d take someone out with me.”

He scrutinized me.

“I’m worried here, for the record,” he said.

“I’ll manage,” I said.  “I’ve managed this far.”

“You have my number,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“You call if you need anything.”

“Yeah.”

“And you… be here in the morning when I show up.  Which will be well before the kids do.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Okay,” he said.

He gathered up his paper container, a stack of his papers.  He was trying to pick up the remainder when I approached, picking it up myself.

Silent, I walked him to his car, handing over the papers when it was time.  I walked inside and locked the door behind me.  The place was big and it was dark, with the open gymnasium space unlit.

I carted the space heater upstairs, and then I got the blankets.  I got the candles and the matches, and then I found the file boxes, collapsed and gathered in piles.

I situated myself in my office, which wasn’t technically my office anymore, and I set to making the boxes, pulling my things off the shelves, and getting them stowed away.

The space heater hummed and the computer monitor clicked, as I periodically checked something or followed up on something I’d seen on a file.

I made a stack of the things I wanted to read, the files that intrigued or that I’d forgotten about, the magazines I liked.  I was a third of the way through my shelves, twelve boxes filled, when I finally settled down in my chair, pulling blankets over me, and started to read.

I got about two pages read before deciding I didn’t have it in me to read more.

I didn’t have it in me to sit still, when my anxieties were churning.

I stood, dropping blankets on the floor, and walked over to the window.  With the cold, the space heater, and the imperfect seal, moisture and fog had collected on it.

I reached out toward the window, a foot away from touching it.  I turned on my forcefield.

A pause.

Then a handprint on the window, in the condensation.  Then another.

A circular smudge that streaked, a naked breast pressed against the glass, moving.

Then the mark that couldn’t be anything but one half of a face, beneath the circular smudge.

They moved, and I wasn’t asking them to move.  The window rattled a bit as it was pushed against. The prints smudged.

A fingernail dragged against the glass, and produced a high pitched squeal, almost ear-splitting.

I dropped the forcefield.  I sank back into my seat, and it protested the landing.

Not a second trigger.  I was well aware of that.  When I’d first had my forcefield, it hadn’t protected my costume.  I had two theories as to why.

The first theory was that I’d grown, and the boundaries that the forcefield used to define ‘me’ had changed.  I’d breathe out, breathe in, gain a pound here, lose a pound there, and it would adjust for the maximum bounds.  It didn’t explain how my skirt was often protected, but I’d mused on that too, that my legs moved, my hair had been long at one point, I’d been shorter…

I’d been that, the forcefield had adjusted, and that was the new upper bound of what I was, forever with me.

It felt thin, as theories went.

The second theory was that it was the Manton effect, that broad-as-bells term for the built in protections and limitations of the power.  The theory was that the built-in protections of the power only protected what I saw as a part of me, and it had taken some time before the costume was that much a part of my identity.

That that was me, now, as much as the costume I wore.

I couldn’t be that.  I couldn’t sit still and be crushed under the weight of that thing.

I needed to do something, and taking books off the shelves felt like it was moving backward, not forward.

I spun around in my seat, and I loaded up the webpage.  Something to do.  Methodically filling out details on the group I’d seen, researching, filling myself in, and letting others know what they were up against.

Something constructive to keep me occupied until the power ran out, or until I was so tired I had no choice but to sleep.

Daylight streamed in at a low angle as I stepped back into my office.  The light was blurred as it came through the condensation on the window, spotted with dots of darkness due to the melted frost that still clung to the window’s surface in lines and constellations of droplets.  Ninety percent of my books were packed up, the boxes that were still here were stacked near the door and the bookshelf, labeled in thick marker, with shorthand notes on the most interesting and essential files within written on the boxes in pen.  I’d left a few of the more interesting files available.  I’d put them in a box on their own, in case I needed something to read.

My phone was plugged into the computer.  I checked it, and made a small and sleepy pump of my fist as it lit up.  Then I saw the red number on the digital-display dial, and let my hand drop.  Missed messages: too many.

It wasn’t that I cared that much about the phone.  It was that the phone being on meant there was power again.  That the power was on again meant I could turn the space heater on.  I flicked the switch, turned on my computer, then lit the candles for what little good heat they offered and wrapped a blanket around me before settling in my computer chair.

I was freshly showered, towel around my hair, and I’d gotten dressed in a slightly musty spare change of clothes.  I had a blanket, candles, and a computer booting up.  I watched as it started the struggle of fighting every other computer out there that was wanting a piece of the web.

There were worse ways to take things easy on myself.

I slid my to-do list across the desk until it was beside my keyboard.  I’d need a car.  Plenty of people were willing to offer the use of theirs in order to pay for fuel.  Food, a place to stay.

Living accommodations might be tricky.  Demand was high, and it was a pretty steep drop in quality from the central areas and the fringes.  Many companies were putting up five or more houses a day or an apartment complex over the course of a week, slapping them together like there was a gun to their heads.  When it came time to find renters, they were more interested in filling the spaces fast.  They had no reason to answer questions or have a potential buyer investigating the nooks and crannies or checking the plumbing if they could turn that person away and have someone else on their doorstep within minutes.

It was a minefield.  Word of mouth, cash, contacts, or luck were required to get a proper house that wouldn’t start falling apart after the fact.  Fume Hood was one of the ones who’d been unlucky.

In more than one way.

My homepage was parahumans online, though.  On top of the missed calls and messages on my phone, I had a slew on the site.

♦  Unread Private Messages from NW_Brandish (2)
♦  Unread Private Messages from Glitzglam (8)

I deleted the messages from my mother.

I opened the second link.

♦  Private Messages from Glitzglam:

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: Staying the night at work.  Don’t fuss about me.  Tell the Dallon parental units if you think it’s necessary to keep them from going on warpath.  I want to be left alone for now

Glitzglam *New Message*: i can field them
Glitzglam *New Message*: I’m *so* sorry that happened i want to explain
Glitzglam *New Message*: I arrived and then Amy did and my eyes must have bugged out of my skull but your mom said it was okay we were trying this and you knew it was a reunion and I was wtf
Glitzglam *New Message*: It didn’t sound like you but I thought ok if you thought you were down I could roll with and back you up
Glitzglam *New Message*: Then Uncle M came and oh man if a man could shit crocodiles and piss bears Uncle M would have been doing that he was so fucking pissed b/c HE wasn’t told and he knew the story from the funerals right?
Glitzglam *New Message*: and he brought his wife/kids there
Glitzglam *New Message*: I knew something was up and tried to call but no answer? & then you didn’t show so I let my guard down. I thought u knew and had cold feet and was relieved
Glitzglam *New Message*: I am so sorry. I had no part in this. I should have been smarter. I did not know really truly

I marked it as unread and minimized it.  I didn’t want to think about it for the moment.

News.  Inquiry into the circumstances of Lachlan Hund.  Not a trial, but an inquiry, some questions by people with more official standing.  He’d fallen in with some sketchy people, and there were thoughts about there being powers involved.

The inquiry was the story of the hour, it seemed.  Heroes stood by to step in and take him away to get help if officials were suspicious he’d been manipulated, but it was sounding like he would go home with his new family.  That sucked.

Other articles, further down the pages.  Fume Hood was alive, and she was a contentious topic.  The actions on the part of the shooter seemed to have split people into two factions, with the ones supporting Fume Hood slightly edging out the ones who condemned her.  Strange to see.

I wanted more info on her situation, and unfortunately, that was all I got.

I added another note to my to-do list.  I’d reach out to Fume Hood, check in.  I’d satisfy my curiosity and nag her about the name choice, which I’d been meaning to do but hadn’t had the chance to.

My eye traveled up to the unread messages.  Crystal’s responses.

It all felt like I was taking a massive backward step.  Like I was back in the immediate aftermath of Gold Morning.  Two legs, two arms, bewildered, emotional.  I was bothered, upset.  I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I’d been angry at my parents then too.  For various reasons.  Angry at a lot of people and things.

I hadn’t and didn’t want that to define me.

I clicked on Crystal’s account name again.

Glitzglam *New Message*: I am so sorry. I had no part in this. I should have been smarter. I did not know really truly

Point_Me_@_The_Sky: S’okay.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I know how these things go.
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I saw this sort of thing play out when it wasn’t aimed at me.   I can read between the lines and speak Carol-ese and I picked up on what she was saying about you being skeptical about the situation
Point_Me_@_The_Sky: I absolve you on the condition of one get together where we have some good eating, your treat, and you need to let me know if you hear of any good apartments or things because I am not good going back to my dads

I drummed my fingers on my desk, mused that my motivations might have to do with my being hungry.

More news articles.  Some capes were taking on roles as icons and iconoclasts for the various movements in the civilian sectors.  Four hero teams led the ‘icon’ groups.  Advance Guard, Foresight, the Shepherds and the Attendant.

The first two were aimed at pushing forward.  New approaches, doing things right this time.  The opinions on what that way forward looked like it differed, feeding into the division between the two groups.

Things were changing.  The Shepherds and Attendant had been groups divided along similar lines, but the Shepherds were self-combusting, and the remaining members were folding into the Attendant.  There was some debate over what the name of the resulting team would be.

And then there were three, I thought.

I idly browsed, caught between liking the Shepherd’s aesthetic and icons better while liking the Attendant’s mindset of moving slowly, with caution.  I was suspicious it might end up being the opposite.  As it was, the Attendant’s approach tacked on a bit too much ‘remember what we lost’ for my liking, clinging to the past, being defined by it, but-

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” I said.

Gil opened the door.  He had two coffees in a tray in one hand and a bag in the other, and he had to juggle them both as he opened the door.

I rose to my feet.

“Sit,” he said.  He nearly dropped his drink as he saw the boxes.  “Shit on me, you’re packed.”

“I’ll be done in time to be gone before the students turn up,” I said, sitting.

“I’m not so concerned about that right now,” he said.  He put the bag and coffees on the desk.  “How are you?”

I shrugged.

“You look better.”

I had a headache from not sleeping and not eating, and from the post-stress hangover, but I also felt lighter than air in a euphoric, fragile way.  It was as if I’d just gotten over a bad round of the flu, and I was at the point where I was getting over the worst of it, but if I did the wrong thing or tested my body in the wrong way I’d be sick and hurting again.

Better.

I shrugged again.  “Yeah.  That word could apply.”

“Did you sleep at all?”

I snorted air out of my nose.  “I’ll sleep when I’m so tired I have no other choice.”

“But you’re feeling better than you were?”

“Yeah.  Better than I was.  Thanks for letting me stay over,” I said.

He pulled a breakfast burger out of the paper bag, and my eyes must have lit up, because he smiled, passing it to me.

A double-decker English muffin, with bacon, two eggs, lettuce, tomato and very sharp mustard.

I wasn’t normally one to eat egg, but I didn’t let that stop me.

I’d taken too big of a bite.  I swallowed hard.

It was good.  Visceral.  Like Snag’s power, the hit of emotion as I enjoyed it was like a bit of metal, closing an electrical connection.  Rounding off a thought I hadn’t wanted to make.

Feeding tubes.  The insertions, the removals.  The tube being there, one eye watching the beige fluid moving through steadily.  Really wanting something good.  Going almost four months without, because they weren’t sure I could.  Then having it be a chore.  It had been better than the alternative, but a chore, to force myself to eat it right, to chew it thoroughly enough.

I swallowed hard again, not because I had another bite to swallow.

Gilpatrick was looking at my files and notes, his back to me, my English muffin sandwich in my hands.

He glanced at me, saw the blinking, and looked away.  “If you want to talk, I’m all ears.”

“I don’t, thank you,” I said.  “I had a bad day, the part you knew about, then it got worse.  Now I’m trying to get centered.”

He nodded.

“This is really good,” I said.

“They are, I took a bite of mine in the car and then ate it before I got here,” he said.  He bent over a box, looking at the notes.  “Man, I wish I still had access to these files and books.  I’d try bribing you if I could do it in good conscience.”

I swallowed again.  “They’re mine and I’m too straightlaced to be bribed.  You can call me if you want to ask about any of it.”

“Then I owe you more favors, am I right?”

“I thought we weren’t counting anymore,” I said.

He didn’t respond to that.  He picked up a file, paging through it.

“Which one is that?”

“Ossuary.  Why leave it out?”

“They’re back, or they will be soon,” I said.  “Activist villains with a heavy focus on environment.  They wouldn’t call themselves villains, I don’t think.  Long list of really messy executions, longer list of leaders with very short tenures, who try to pull a very disparate group together, fail, and abdicate.”

“Were they the ones who used to call themselves Elephant Graveyard?”

“That’s the one.  One of the early leaders pushed the name change along with a shift away from focusing on animals and animal welfare,” I said.  “I liked Elephant Graveyard more, I think.  Clunky, but clunky in a way that stands out, and it made for really good imagery, when they left a spray painted calling card.”

“I don’t want to pry,” Gilpatrick said.

“About Ossuary?”

“About you.  I spent a while thinking about what to do.  I’ve had some good bosses and bad bosses over the years.  When you throw yourself into the fray like you do when you’re a PRT squaddie, you really need to know that the people above you are looking out for you.  That your back is covered.”

“Yeah,” I said.  Same applied to family, to parents.

“I don’t want to push boundaries or cross any lines, and I don’t want to ask the wrong thing.  When you say you don’t want to talk, can I ask why?  Any answer you gave could help me make sure I’m covering your back as you move on to better things.”

“Because I’d have to fill you in on years of background and that’s not stuff I want to relive,” I said.

“Ah.”

“Because it’s confidential, because it’s messy, because… as cool as a guy as you can be, you can’t make it better.  You can’t give me the answers or guidance I need because there’s a whole ream of things that’s separate and aside from the years of my background that you’d need to get into or know and… I’m going overboard with this.”

“I do want to hear,” he said.  “Anything else?”

“That’s mostly it,” I said.

He nodded.  He rubbed his head for a second, thinking.  “You want company?”

“Nah,” I said.  “I’d just be packing the last few boxes.  I wouldn’t mind a hand getting them out to the car, just to speed things up when the time comes.”

“You have a car?”

“I’ll get someone off of a listing or something.  I’ve got to figure out what I’m doing, so there’s that too.  I wouldn’t be good company, while I’m working through all of that.”

“You don’t have to be packed up and gone today,” he said.

“I kind of need to,” I said.

He nodded, rubbing his head again.  “I’ll cover the car.  I’ll pay the driver.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You know where to find me.  Place is empty, so you can shout from the stairs and I’ll hear you.”

“Right,” I said.

“I’m going to head to my office.  I’ve got something to do.”

I gave him a little salute.

Energized by food and coffee, still feeling lightweight, I worked on getting my boxes packed up.  Along the way, I slotted my files and folders into the box I’d reserved for the most pertinent factors.  The villains of the area, the heroes, and the villains turned hero.  The hoods.

The day was warming up.  The light from the sun was warm enough to counteract the lower temperature.  By midday, if yesterday was any indication, it would be short-sleeves and shorts weather again.

A message popped up on my screen.

♦  Private Messages from Glitzglam:

Glitzglam: game plan. u situate yourself at my place until you have apartment ur happy with.  u & I raid ur dads place while he at work, get ur stuff.  standard attack formation, I play defense, make sure coast is clear, I support you, u take point and do what u need

I fired off my response.  That worked.  I had a couch to sleep on.

One thing off of my to-do list.  I liked the progress.  Progress was good.  So long as I moved forward, I could stay aloft.

I cleared off the remainder of the bookshelves, stacking the boxes.  I scribbled out my notes on the lid, checking the contents.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” I said.

Gilpatrick.

“Time for me to go?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said.  “There’s a bit.  I don’t want to force you out the door like that.”

“Okay,” I said.  I raised an eyebrow.

“I was thinking, over the past twelve hours, if you were my student, I wouldn’t want to let you go with things like this.  Normally I’d contact a guardian.”

My heart skipped a beat at that.  No.

“But you said last night you had a family thing to do.  I can connect dots.”

I nodded.

“I made some phone calls,” he said.

He stepped out of the doorway.

Mrs. Yamada.  Shorter than me, hair tied back in a simple ponytail, wearing a skirt, white top, and jacket, with a simple, short string of pearls at her collarbone.

“Oh wow,” she said.  “Look at you.”

I didn’t have words, so I just lifted my arms to either side and let them fall.

“Is this okay?” Gilpatrick asked.

“Yeah,” I said.  I swallowed.  “Yeah.  Just about perfect.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” he said.

Jessica blinked a few times, before fanning herself.  “I’m a little misty eyed.  Sorry.”

I was a little misty eyed myself.

“Can I give you a hug?” she asked.  When I nodded, she did so.  I hugged her back.

“You put me down as your emergency contact?” she asked.

“Sorry,” I said.  “I- I honestly forgot I did that.  It was more than a year ago.”

I’d had to name someone, and I hadn’t named my parents because-

Because.

“It’s more than alright,” she said.  “Your boss said he was worried about you.”

I opened my mouth to reply, and then the waterworks started instead.

⊙

Jessica slammed the back hatch of her car, most of the boxes settled inside.

“Do you want to walk?” she asked.  “Around the block, maybe?  Or we could step back inside.”

If I was going to start crying again.

Students were just now starting to appear, and I didn’t want to sit still.

“We can walk,” I said.

“It’s been amazing to hear your voice,” she said.  “I know you were often frustrated, trying to communicate with the means you had available.  I was frustrated too, but I wasn’t allowed to say that.”

“I could tell,” I said.

“You were a challenging patient, those first few months-”

I snorted.

“-but much like many teachers say they grow to care most about the class clowns and problem students, I came to hold you close to my heart.  I wanted so badly to give you answers and to hear you out without having to rely on text to speech and letters you wrote between appointments.  I wanted to dialogue, and it was so very hard to do that.”

“It was,” I said.

Why was it so much easier to talk about the things that I couldn’t normally even think about, like this?

“How did you find your way back from that?”

How did I become Victoria again, instead of the wretched thing in the hospital room, or in the home for invalids?

“My sister,” I said, my voice soft.

“Oh.  That’s not an easy thing,” she said.

“No,” I said, my voice even softer.

I’d already filled her in on the details of yesterday and the past few months.  She’d offered a listening ear.  I’d spent all night working out my next few steps, I knew what the situation was, I didn’t really need more angles to view it from.

This, though… if I was going to make the most of the time I had with her here, then I wanted to at least get a handle on this.

“We were all brought to the battlefield during Gold Morning.  There’s… that’s a hard topic to field.”

“There’s an unspoken agreement that the civilians don’t get to know,” she said.

“But you’re not really a civilian,” I said.

“No,” she said.  “I’ve heard reports.  Some from very close to the center of the action.  I know what happened.”

“Body, mind, and heart, you know how that’s a thing?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I lost my body, two years before Gold Morning.  My heart was… twisted into something unrecognizable.”

“Yes.”

“And… Gold Morning hit.  And the-” I paused.  There were people on the street, walking toward the school gate and the various block buildings as we walked away from it all.  A tide we walked against.  I had to shut up until people were mostly out of earshot.  “And I was controlled in mind.  I didn’t have much, but I could make my decisions.  I could decide to use my power or not.  She took that away from me, for a brief time.”

“I’ve talked to a number of people who had a very hard time with that.”

“You know who she was?”

“I do.”

I nodded to myself.

“Yeah,” I said.  “My sister told me.”

Even if I was free to talk, the words still carried their ugly weight.  The words and associated mental pictures still dragged my mood down.

“She knew me or knew of me, or she knew my sister.  She decided in the end that she’d put my sister right next to me.  She didn’t do that for many people at all, as far as I can tell.”

“And your sister healed you?”

“Gave me a body again.  Um.  She made me seventeen again.  Walked back the clock, as if it… I don’t know.  So she didn’t take two years of my life from me in body, like she did in everything else.  I’m physically nineteen now, apparently.”

“You said body, mind and spirit.  She fixed one of the three.  Did she undo the effect on your emotions?”

I drew in a breath, sighed heavily.  I nodded.  “She actually- she turned off my emotions.  Suppressed them.  Then she asked me what I wanted.”

“What did you want?”

“I remember thinking, you know, it was really possible she wanted me to say that I wanted to go back to liking her.  And if she did think that, then it was unconscionable.  Divorced from all emotion, I thought it was unconscionable.”

“Okay.”

“And divorced from all emotion, I thought I’d be fair.  That I’d give her the benefit of a doubt.  That I’d assume that wasn’t what she meant or wanted.  I told her I wanted to remember.”

“To remember?”

“Those two years,” I said, my voice hollow.  I drew in another deep breath.

Further down the street, a nine or ten year old boy with straight black hair and brown skin looked at Jessica, his eyes widening, then he looked at me.  He raised his hand, extending it toward Jessica as they passed one another.

She gave him a high five, then pushed his head, sending him on his way, toward the school.

“They weren’t good years.”

“Rationally?  Divorced from emotion?  I knew.  I can’t forgive her.  Ever.  I can’t forget what she did, or she might do it again.  To someone else.  To me.  I told her to fix my feelings and leave my brain alone otherwise.”

“It’s a heavy weight to carry,” she said.

“Those two years are really damn heavy,” I said.  “Everything else is.  But I’ve been holding on to that moment.  I hate that I hold onto it, because she did it, but everything is tainted by her, so what can I do?”

“You hold onto it?  How?”

“Being emotionless, putting those feelings away.  My feelings and impulses got me into that whole mess in the first place.  I hurt an awful lot of awful people, you know.”

“We’ve talked about that.  You wrote letters outlining your thoughts and how you wanted to apologize to some of those affected.”

“My entire life leading up to that basketball game, I wanted so horribly badly to be a hero, you know?  It felt like I thought about it every ten minutes.  My parents were heroes, my cousin was, my aunt and uncle were, and everything revolved around it.  I wanted it all so badly it hurt, and I didn’t have it for years.  Then that basketball game, and I wanted to have something where I was the hero, where I got to stand out.  Because sometimes it felt like my parents didn’t see me.”

“That’s been a recurring idea.  You talked about their missed visits.”

“They came a lot,” I said.  “I know that.  My dad more than my mom.  But every missed visit was a horrible thing, and the little things mattered so much when I had nothing else.  Um.  And this basketball game, I know I’ve talked about this before.  But this one girl kicked my freaking ass.  In my face, knocking me over, intercepting every pass, blocking every shot.  She didn’t have any powers or anything, she was just… good.  Better.”

“A lot of things came into focus in that moment.”

“Every time she or one of her teammates beat me, I could see the look of disappointment on my parent’s faces.  In the other moments, they looked so bored.  And it was boring, you know.  No parent wants to go sit through amateurs doing badly at a high school sport.”

“Some do.”

“Anyway, she hit me hard, she said something about me being overrated, and it was the last straw.  Realizing I stood so far from family, that I didn’t want to be there, but I had no other choice, my sternum was hurting where she’d driven her elbow into me.  I got my powers.”

“Years of wanting, leading up to that.”

She’d caught the thread I’d wanted to lay out.  It helped.  “And then just under three years as Victoria-slash-Glory-Girl.  And then… hospital.”

“Which was undeniably horrible.”

“It felt like my life had ended.  No hope or help.  All I had to cling to were those memories of the three years I was Glory Girl.  I could look back, think about every fight, every encounter.  The ones I was proud of.  The ones I wasn’t.  I had so much regret, replaying events out in my head.  It started with me thinking about- that moment when it all went so wrong.  When she messed with my emotions, then going backward.”

Emotions caught me.  I made my expression a scowl, because I was worried what my face might do otherwise.

“I was such a stupid fucking kid,” I said.

“That’s allowed,” she said.

I shook my head.  “Not when you’re as strong as I am.”

“And you want to be emotionless?  I don’t know if that’s healthy.”

“Not emotionless.  But… smarter about it.  The idea I keep coming back to is I want to be a warrior monk.”

“A warrior monk?”

“Just- centered when it counts, I guess?”

“Why the warrior part?  Do you envision yourself fighting?”

“I don’t honestly know.  It never occurred to me.”

Jessica smiled.

“What’s next for Victoria Dallon?” she asked.

“You need to mock me, say Victoria Dallon, warrior monk,” I said.  “I deserve it.”

“I wouldn’t,” she said.  “If everyone in costume could remain centered while doing what they do, it would make a world of difference.  I think it’s good.  I’d think about that more as you take your next steps.”

“I know I want to move forward, because… I dunno.  I feel like I’m a shark that drowns if it stops moving, or a bird that drops out of the air like a stone if I’m not flying forward.  I know I need to get some of the basics of life squared away.  I’m okay for money for a couple of months, but I can’t stay on Crystal’s couch.”

“In my brief interactions with Crystal, I did like her,” Jessica said.

“She’s great.  But not great to live with long-term, I don’t think.  You’d never know it to look at her, she’s beautiful, she’s fashionable, and very well put together, but if you looked at her apartment…”

I trailed off, using my expression to convey a bit of the horror to Jessica.

“Ah,” Jessica said.  She smiled again.

“I don’t know what to do next.”

“Well, I’d think about how to apply the warrior monk role to your day to day life,” she said.  She pulled off her jacket.  The weather had warmed up enough.  “What it means to you, why it’s the first thing or the recurring thing in your thought processes.”

“I just want to… do.”

“You said you regretted yesterday, but Jasper thanked you.  Would you rather have not done it?  Is it the ‘want’ in wanting to do things that’s problematic, or is it the ‘do’?”

I drew in a deep breath.  “That’s… a very complicated question, I think.”

“You don’t have to answer it right now,” she said.

“I think I can, though.  I think… I had to.  And as much as it was hard and cost me my job, I preferred it to the alternative.  I can’t not do things that help out.  I just want to do it in a good, centered way.”

“Could it be a mundane job?  Construction?  Desk work?  Would you want to do something like you were doing with the patrol?”

I thought about it.

I couldn’t see it.  Not long-term.

“What’s the first thing that comes to mind?” she asked.

“I think… fuck me, I think even now, I can’t quite see myself being anything but a hero.  There are good people I’ve gotten to know.  People I want to protect and help.  Like Gilpatrick, like Weld and Vista and my cousin and a couple of the teenagers I was working with in patrol block.  You.  I want good things for them.”

“Thank you,” she said.  “That means a lot to me.”

“I’ve been trying to convince myself there’s some other way, but… I can’t not do anything.”

“There’s worse things.  Especially if you can do it smart and centered.”

“I don’t want to be Glory Girl,” I said.  “Someone remarked yesterday that they’d thought she died and… good.  She can stay dead.”

“Sounds like you have an idea of what you’re doing next.”

“It’s the wrong climate for it,” I said.  “I just watched a team of heroes get eaten alive by the public.  One took a bullet.”

“Figure it out,” she said.

I frowned.

“Again, there’s no rush,” she said.

“I can’t sit still,” I said.  “There’s a bit of a rush.”

“Touch base with me,” she said.  “We’ll go out for coffee, catch up.  I can offer unofficial, more-friend-than-therapist advice.  I think you’ll figure it out, and I can give you a few nudges here and there.”

That gave me pause.

“You’re not a therapist anymore?” I asked.

“Just the opposite,” she said.  “I’m very much a therapist.  Ten hour days, six or seven days a week, and other peripheral obligations.  I’m afraid I’m not in a position to take you on as a patient again, Victoria, as much as I would dearly like to.”

That hurt.  I didn’t want to say it, but it did hurt.

“I just joined the Wardens as a staff psychologist for their junior members and some special cases, and I’m just not equipped, unfortunately.  If you want it, I could try finding a colleague who you could talk to.  Most are as busy as I am, so it might take a bit of time.”

I want you.

I want-

“Sorry to take up your time today, when you’re as busy as you are.”

“It’s more than alright, Victoria,” she said.  She was looking straight ahead as she talked, one hand on her jacket as she walked.  “With the hours I work, I lose objectivity.  It becomes the work, and I lose sight of the patients.  Sometimes it’s hard to see the wins.  Like I said, you were a patient close to my own heart, and I thought you were one of the ones we lost.  Seeing you, hearing you?  It means the world to me.  It gives me a measure of hope.”

I nodded.

She looked over at me.  “I’ll reach out to a colleague.  I’ll see what I can do, if that’s okay.  Give you some reassurance there.”

“I-” I started.

“Yes?”

“It’s okay, but… if you wanted to reassure me-” I said.

It felt a little less like I could talk about certain topics with her, now.

“If it’s within my power, I’ll try anything,” she said.

“My sister,” I said, my voice soft.  “Send someone her way.”

Mrs. Yamada raised one eyebrow.

I knew what she was thinking.  She wondered if it was selflessness, or if I was a surprisingly good person.  I wasn’t.

“She’s the scariest damn person in the world, Jessica,” I said.  “And I don’t think that’s bias.  There’s a chance she’s going to do something bad, and she’s so damn powerful, that when and if it happens, it’s going to be so much worse than what happened to me, and it’s going to affect an awful lot more people.”

The truck stopped at the gate, producing the occasional sputter and knocking sound as it sat there.  The driver extended a hand out the window, waving for the camera, and the gate opened by way of remotely operated pulley.

It was another minute to the top of the hill, where the truck rolled to a stop in the parking lot, an expanse of gravel without any defined parking spots.  The three people within remained where they were, warily observing the restaurant from a distance.

It was a log cabin writ large, the cedars stripped of their bark and stained with something that made them almost glossy, a warm yellow under the sun.  The third floor was half the size of the other two, allowing the other half of what would have been the third floor to be a rooftop patio instead.  A series of tables was scattered around the building, some close together and others a considerable distance away, as if they were trying to escape into the woods.  Beyond the building was a cliff, and a vast expanse of forests, hills, mountains, and a small lake.

“Nice view,” Moose said, from the backseat.

Linc was settled in the passenger seat, reclining a bit with his seat angled back and his legs folded under him.  With Moose in the back, he’d had to slide his seat as far forward as it could go, and it didn’t leave him much legroom.  “Just think, past that view there isn’t nothing at all.  If you headed straight ahead and kept going, you might not find any habitation until you ended up on the backside of this settlement here.”

“If you headed straight ahead,” the driver said, pausing to take a swig of the bottle of water she’d wedged into her cup holder, making a face at how warm it was, “You’d put yourself into that lake down there.  Or you’d end up in the ocean.  You’d drown either way.”

Linc smirked.

“People would call you an idiot,” she said.  “Why would you go straight ahead like that?  Are you proving a point?”

“I don’t think that’s what Linc was getting at,” Moose said.

“Harper knows what I’m getting at,” Linc said, turning around in his seat to look at Moose as he said it.

Moose was a big guy, with tousled blond hair.  He’d undone some of the straps of his mask and had the mask laying over one muscular shoulder.  The mask was metal, crude, and Moose wore something cloth under it for padding, which he had on now.  He wore a sleeveless undershirt, jeans, boots, and had two gauntlets sitting next to him on the car seat.  Even with the truck being large and Moose lying down across the length of the seat, he barely fit.  He didn’t seem to mind much.

Behind Moose and the truck was the gravel road that led up the hill, the gate checkpoint, and a ways below that, the simple settlement where most visitors would be made to feel unwelcome.  One to two thousand people would be living there at most.

“They built this place and situated it on the very edge of civilization,” Linc said, to round off his earlier thought.

“You two always seemed like the kind of edge of civilization people to me,” Moose asked.

“We do okay,” Linc said.  “Put us in the middle of a city, we do fine, eh babe?”

“Mm,” Harper made a vaguely affirmative sound.  “This a trap, y’think?”

Linc turned his attention to the building at the top of the hill.  “Nah.  Why would you build a nice place like this and use it for a nefarious purpose.”

“Well, y’know, it’s gonna be nefarious.  That’s why we’re here,” she said.  “It’s a question of if it’s a murderous sort of nefarious.”

“That’s a good question, I admit,” Linc said.

“I knew a guy,” Moose said.  “He had a mansion.  Inherited or somethin’.  Super nice.”

“The guy or the house?” Linc asked.

“Hm?”

“The guy was nice or the house was nice?”

“The house.  That’s what I’m gettin’ at.  The guy was as nefarious as they get.  He renovated the insides.  He wanted to make a whole business of holdin’ people that needed holdin’.  For ransom.  Said he’d deal with ’em and clean up the mess if ransoms weren’t paid.  Wanted to be a contractor for disposin’ of people in horrible ways.”

“You’re supposed to just drop them off at the nice, conspicuous mansion, hand over cash?” Harper asked.

“That was it, I think.  He’d make sure they died slow and horrible for you, clean them up, make sure they weren’t found.”

“Definitely not a nice guy then,” Linc said.

“I dare say he wasn’t,” Moose said.

“That’s a terrible idea for a business,” Harper said.

“It kind of is,” Linc said.

“Might’ve been,” Moose said.  “He didn’t seem in it for the money, gotta say.  I highly suspect he was more focused on the part where he would do horrible things to people.  Guy has a nice place, he wants to do creatively bad things to people, and he wanted a bit of pocket money.  Draw lines between each of those things and you end up with something shaped like his game plan there.”

“A triangle?” Linc asked, looking back at Moose.  At Moose’s shrug, he elaborated, “If you draw straight lines between three things, you get a triangle.”

“Maybe the lines weren’t straight,” Moose said.  “But if you’re wondering if this is a trap, I don’t think it being fancy is ruling anythin’ out.”

“It’s a log building, Moose.  Nothing that fancy.”

“Fancy to me.”

Harper leaned forward against the steering wheel, to get closer to the windshield, squinting against the sun.

“What do you think, babe?” Linc asked.  “Is it a murderous nefarious or a prosperous nefarious.”

“It’s something,” she said.  “The people on the roof are in costume and some of them are looking at us.  I think we better get ourselves inside or they’re going to start laughing at us.”

“They’re going to laugh whatever happens,” Linc said.  “Your truck has seen better days-”

“Don’t go talking about my truck, Linc.”

“And we’ve got Moose with us, no offense Moose.”

“Some offense taken, thank you very much,” Moose said, indignant.

“You call yourself Moose.  People are going to laugh.  That’s when you show your merits and make them stop laughing, is the way it works.”

“People shouldn’t laugh in the first place,” Moose said.  “The Moose is a terrifying and noble creature.  If you wouldn’t fuck with a rhino, you shouldn’t fuck with a moose.  It’s one of the only proper prehistoric, giant animal species to have the grit to last to today.”

Harper turned off the truck.  The truck sputtered, coughed, and died abruptly, in a way that suggested it wouldn’t revive again.

“I know, bud,” Linc said, taking his eye off the truck’s much-abused, dust-caked dash.  “I know that much, I’ve seen one up close.  I’ve seen one run through snow that a normal person couldn’t walk in and hit a car hard enough to roll it.  I have a healthy respect.”

“Damn right,” Moose said.

Harper gave Linc a look, pulling her full mask on and flipping up her hood.

“But they don’t all know it,” Linc said.  “You gotta work with that.  You picked a jokey name, you gotta put up with the jokes.”

“Hope was they’d be laughing with, not laughing at,” Moose said.  “At least I’d hope you weren’t the ones poking fun at me.  It’s unkind, Linc.”

Harper climbed out of the truck.

“I’m not laughing at, bud.  I’m just saying they might be.  That’s all,” Linc said.  He pulled his mask on, fixed his hair and beard with few sweeps of his hand, and climbed out, then hit the lever to flip his seat forward and give Moose room to squeeze out.

Moose kept the cloth mask on over his upper face,  leaving the metal mask on his shoulder.  He stretched, his joints popping audibly, and pulled his fur-lined gauntlets on.

“You’re going to have to take those off again if we end up eating,” Linc said.

“It’s about presentation,” Moose said.  “Besides, the name doesn’t make sense if I don’t got ’em.”

Harper was in costume, though the costume part was mostly a hooded, sleeveless top in her namesake velvet color, lopsided in how it trailed down over one leg in a robe-like aesthetic.  She wore skintight shorts underneath.  A black mask covered her upper face, and had truncated, forking horns that poked out through the top of the hood and kept the hood from falling back.

Linc wore a mask like Velvet’s, but his traced the area around his eye sockets and eyebrows, with the edges tracing back and into his hair, forking as they did.  He wore a bodysuit for the upper body and pants.  His costume had always been meant to be layered, but the heat had forced him to strip down to the base layer, with the pants only because he felt like a clown if he wore only the skintight stuff.

People leaning against and over the railing on the roof watched them as they approached the door.

“This place is a hell of a lot better than the last couple we visited,” Prancer remarked.

“More expensive too,” Velvet said.  She was looking at the blackboard posted by the door, with prices.  “Twenty dollars for a chicken sandwich?”

“Come on,” Prancer said, pushing the door open.

The inside was expansive, with the kitchen as an island in the middle, counters and surrounding it, booths around the edges of the room, and tables in the space in between.  There were only eleven non-staff people within, but the ground floor could have seated a hundred or more.

Prancer approached the kitchen island.  He spoke to a black, twenty-something woman in a tan polo shirt and apron, “Who do I talk to for the rules?”

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, indicating an elderly black man who was wiping out a glass.  The man was watching, squinting with one eye, as he carried out the routine motion of cleaning the glass.

“He’s in charge?” Prancer asked.

The employee gave Prancer a single nod.

“What can I do for you?” the man asked, as the three approached.

“We’ve been around the block a couple of times, I’m just looking for a primer on customs, and any special rules.”

“Payment up front for what you’re ordering, have the money ready when you order if it’s busy.  Don’t cause trouble, don’t draw weapons, don’t be loud, give us a heads up and use the side door or the patio if your power is going to bother anyone.  Upstairs is the bar, you don’t go upstairs unless you’re invited or you already know you qualify to go upstairs.”

“What kind of qualification?” Velvet asked.

“If you have to ask, you don’t have it,” the old man said.  He put the glass down and picked up another.  “Roof is for more private meetings than you’d have on the second floor.  Don’t go taking yourself up there if you wouldn’t be allowed on the second floor.”

“Noted,” Prancer said.  “Anyone to avoid, watch out for, anything like that?”

“That’s more for you to watch out for than for me to bother with.  If they’re causing a problem or being a bother to others, they’ll get kicked out.  If you help with the kicking out, I’ll give you something on the house.”

“Right,” Prancer said.  “Got it.”

“Do you serve drinks down here?” Moose asked.

“We do.  Anything fancier than beer or wine, we’ll have to send someone upstairs to fetch it.”

“Could I grab a mightyman?” Moose asked.  He pulled off a gauntlet and retrieved a wallet from his pocket.  He held out a twenty.  “Long, hot drive.”

“Name?” the old man asked, gesturing at an employee.  The employee set to getting the beer.  The old man pulled a pad and pen out of his apron.

“Name?  Uh, M.K.,” Moose said.

“No initials,” the man said.

“Just Moose then,” Moose said, sliding the twenty across the bar.  “We can order food at the tables?”

“You can,” the old man said.  He picked up the money, then pulled out a fiver from the pocket of his apron and passed it back to Moose.  He looked at the others.  “Names?”

“Prancer.  She’s Velvet.”

“Do I need to worry about you?”

“Nah.  We’re pretty tame.  We’re here to make contacts and get our names out there for the small stuff.”

“If you do any business, be discreet enough I and my staff don’t see it.  If you use powers, don’t bother the person next to you.”

“Got it.  Can I grab a beer?  What my buddy Moose is having,” Prancer handed over the bills.

“Me too,” Velvet said.

Prancer withdrew a larger bill from his wallet, and set it on the counter, sliding it toward the old man.  “Gratuity?”

“No need,” the old man said.  “Service fees and peace of mind are worked into the food prices.  Order something, if you want to thank me.”

Beers in hand, they briefly considered sitting at the counter before Moose took a seat at one of the tables.

“Where you sit is important,” Prancer said.  “Booth, you’re minding your own business, you’ve got walls around you.  Sitting at the counter, you’re open to people approaching you and joining you, I think.  Not entirely sure how it works here in particular.”

“I hear you,” Moose said, “But I was sittin’ funny the entire drive here, and if I sit on one of those stools then I’m going to have my back spasming the entire way back.  I need a sturdy chair, here.”

“Sure, doesn’t matter that much,” Prancer said.  He twisted around in his seat, one hand on his beer, taking a look at the others who were present.  “Pretty laid back here.”

“Could be a quieter time of the day,” Velvet said.

“Out of the way place, too,” Prancer said.  “You heard what he said about using powers?  How many places have we been to, and how many allowed use of powers at all?”

“Ten.  Ten places,” Velvet said, hunkering down over her beer.  “This is the only one, I think.  Might have been a rule in The Well, but that was more the kind of place where you don’t know the rules until someone’s punching your face in for violating them.”

Prancer watched as a faint speck of dust traveled across his vision, pink-tinted.  He smiled.

Four teenagers in the corner booth.  They wore dark clothes with symbols and designs spray painted on and bleached into the fabric.  One with a bandanna on his head looked their way, and Prancer flashed the guy a smile.

Three in another booth, against a wall.  Tinkers.  There was a cloth strewn out over the table, and parts were laid out.  They ranged from twists of metal to a glass tube housing something that looked like a large, chewed wad of gum.  The wad was throwing itself against the sides of its glass cage.

He wondered how that worked with the ‘no business’ rule.  Were they only talking shop?  Where was the line drawn?

Sitting alone in one booth was a woman with a mask covering her lower face, long black hair, and a long red dress with a slit down one side, exposing a tantalizing bit of leg.  She wore an intricate framework of metal at her arms and hands, a series of bands at the elbow, wrist, knuckles, and rings at the finger, with thin rods of steel extending between each, along the back of each finger, and stopping at each finger and thumbtip.  Each tip was enveloped by an ornate claw.

Her heels were much the same, Prancer noted.  Heels were unusual for someone in costume, and hers were more unusual still.   She wore something similar to her gloves, with the same bands at her leg, ankle, and foot, with the thin metal bars extending between each.  Her toes were covered with the same metal claws, there was a strap of metal below the balls of her feet, and at her heel, one large claw-point served as the ‘heel’ of her heel, stabbing straight down.

When she moved one leg to fold one knee over the other, the claw tips moved on their own, twitching, recalibrating, the heel shifting back to stay pointed at the ground, flick back and away, then flick down.

She undid one side of her mask so it swung toward Prancer, still blocking his view of her mouth, helped by the draping of long hair, and she leaned down, taking a bite of her wrap.  She put one hand to the loose end of her mask while she chewed, and fastened the end as she swallowed.

She saw him looking, turning her head his way.  He smiled at her.

She only stared.

“Someone’s coming,” Moose said.

One of the spray painted kids.  The guy Prancer had smiled at.

“You’re new.”

“Prancer, Velvet, M.K.,” Prancer introduced the group.

“Where are you from?”

“Alaska, believe it or not.”

“Long way,” the teenager said.

“Especially when you’re driving it,” Prancer said.  “Who are you guys?”

“The group’s Ripcord.  I’m Gorgos.  We raid stores and resell, mostly.  We’re nobodies.  It’s the B-listers and small fry down here.  The people with name recognition go upstairs.”

“Meaning the people we want to do business with are upstairs,” Velvet said, still leaning heavily over her beer.

“It’s fine,” Prancer said.  “We’ll work it out.”

“What do you guys do?”

“We wheel and deal,” Prancer said.

“Prancer likes to be clever, but he doesn’t get that sometimes you have to explain why it’s clever, otherwise you only confuse people,” Velvet said.

“It’s why I have you, babe.”

“The wheel part is getaway driving and transporting,” she explained.

The kid leaned forward.  The decoration on his outfit looked like the sort done with a stencil and a spray bottle filled with bleach, strategically bleaching fabric.  Snakes and a woman’s face as a recurring motif.  He had a bandanna over the top of his head and one over his nose and mouth.  “What do you deal?”

“Grass, mostly,” Prancer said.

“You actually have some?”

“Not here, but we have it.  Brand new and in high demand, given the times,” Prancer said.

“Are you looking for resellers?”

“For the right price.  Mostly we’re looking for new friends, and we’re trying to get the lay of the land before we do anything too enterprising.”

“Can I get back to you?” the guy asked.

“You’re welcome to,” Prancer said.  “We wouldn’t mind company either, if you guys wanted to join us.”

“I’d have to get back to you on that too,” the guy said.  “We’re trying to find our way these days.  We agreed in the beginning we wouldn’t have one leader, and that was great then, but right now we’ve got two different leadership styles butting heads.”

Prancer looked over at the table, where those seated were having a very fierce, hushed discussion.

“If you want to just sit and trade stories, we’d be happy to have you,” Prancer said.  “Get away from all that, maybe come away with some fresh perspective.”

“I might take you up on that.  For now I’d better get back and make sure nobody reaches across the table to strangle someone.”

“Question before you go,” Moose said.  “Is it always this quiet?”

“It’s about to get noisier,” Gorgos said.  “Keep an eye on the guy at the end of the kitchen there.  He communicates with people in town.  He was talking to the boss about something and the boss put another cook on the stove.  Wait ten minutes and I bet he’ll hit the button to open the gate.  If he holds it down it’s a lot of people.  My guess is the ferry from NYC hit the shore near the G-N portal twenty minutes ago.”

“Good to know, thanks,” Prancer said.

Gorgos jogged back to his team.

“You’re dwellin’ a lot on going upstairs,” Moose observed.

“Reminds me of being a kid and being told I had to stay downstairs with my cousins and their friends during the holidays.  My cousins were assholes,” Velvet said.  “One good thing about Gold Morning is it took them out of the picture.”

Moose whistled.

“She’s wearing the purple cloak, that’s a sign of royalty, don’t you know?” Prancer plucked at Velvet’s hood.  Velvet batted his hand away.  “And royalty doesn’t not go upstairs.  Royalty doesn’t show mercy.”

“Y’know I went to prison because of you, Prance,” she said, quiet.

“Well, yeah.  I will point out we survived Gold Morning because we weren’t home when Alaska got hit.”

“I went to prison for you,” she said, again.  “That counts for a lot.”

“‘Course.  How does that connect, though?”

“Just sayin’,” she said, her accent thicker as her voice became softer.  “You said things would be different.”

“They will,” he said.  He put a hand around her shoulders and pulled her closer, then kissed the top of her head.  “We’ve got a decent crop, a lot of demand.  We’ll do okay.  We’ll make inroads.”

“I’m optimistic,” Moose said.

“I’m not unoptimistic,” Velvet said.

“You’re not enthused either, doesn’t sound like,” Moose said.

“Just sorta hoping for more, sooner,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said.  There wasn’t much more to say.

Velvet reached out, and the menu flew from the tabletop to her hand.  It was tinted red and dusty, but much of their table and glasses were, now.

Prancer took stock of the other three capes in the room before the newest batch of arrivals reached the front door.

There was one, who might have been a bouncer, who had stepped out the side door momentarily and was now taking a seat by that same door.  He wore a mask of metal bars that looked like they’d been welded to one another, all vertical, but he also wore a black apron.

That left only the couple at the bar.  Matching costumes, white armor with jet black iconography, multiple circles and crescents in various patterns, with the armor sprayed black around each icon, so it looked like the darkness glowed.  The man wore full armor, the woman wore only scattered pieces of armor, with white chainmail to cover the rest of her.

They drank white wine, in the middle of the afternoon.

Capes were strange people, Prancer mused.

“I want to be the kind of person who earns her way upstairs,” Velvet said.  Her head still rested against his shoulder, where he’d pulled her close.

“That’s really stuck in you, huh?”

“It’s stuck,” she said.  Without moving her head, she raised the beer to her lips and took a careful sip.

“You might have to lose the beater of a truck, babe, if you want to dress the part.”

“Don’t go talkin’ about my truck, Prance.”

“Every time you turn it off, it sounds like it’s off for good.  I say a little prayer to myself that it will be, even knowing it’s a long, long walk back to home.  Then I can take the money I’ve got saved up and buy you something nice.  All the bells and whistles.”

“When I got out of prison, I only had two things, babe.  That truck, and you.  I wasn’t feeling especially fond of you at the time, either.  It’s the only thing I’ve had for myself since I was old enough to have anything, that I’ve been able to keep.”

“Counts for somethin’, that,” Moose said.

“It does,” Velvet said, frowning down at her beer.

Prancer frowned at Moose, who only shrugged.  Guy wasn’t making it any easier.

“What if we overhauled the outside, got someone to give the engine a real solid lookin’-at?” Prancer asked.

“So long as it stays my truck.  I don’t want you ship-of-Theseusing it.”

Prancer resisted swearing under his breath.  So that tactic wouldn’t work.

There was more of the pink dust in the air, now.  He gave Velvet a kiss on top of the head, then shrugged slightly.  She moved her head off of his shoulder, sitting upright.

“Things will be better,” he said.

She reached for his hand and squeezed it.  “I’m going to go find the ladies’ room.  Order food before things get hairy.  I’ll have the chicken caesar sandwich and grab a few bottled waters while you’re at it.  For the drive back.”

“You know the markup on those will be insane,” Prancer said.

“Just get me my water,” she said.

She walked away.  Prancer watched her walk away, feeling wistful.

He signaled the waitress.  He made sure to give Velvet’s order while he remembered it, and then gave his own.  Moose put in enough of an order for two people.

When they were alone again, Moose commented, “Sorry, for interjectin’.”

“Interjecting?”

“When you were talking about the truck, and about prison.”

“Ah.  Yep.  Apology accepted.”

“Hard to be the third wheel sometimes.  Especially when things get complicated, relationship-wise.”

“Can’t speak about the third-wheeling.  That’s for you to figure out.  But for the relationship part, it’s the simplest thing in the world, Moose,” Prancer said.  “She’s my girlfriend, I’m her boyfriend.  Sometimes you and she enjoy each other’s company, sometimes I enjoy someone else’s company, but that doesn’t change that it’s me and it’s her as the boyfriend and girlfriend.”

His voice had become progressively more stern as he’d talked.  He paused, meeting Moose’s eyes.

“Makes sense,” Moose said.  Prancer smiled.

“Doesn’t seem like you’ve had anyone but her keeping you company, gotta say,” Moose said.

Prancer looked at the woman with the mask on her lower face and the claw-heels.  “Trying to be better.”

“Good for you,” Moose said, before taking a drink of his beer.

“I’m going to marry that Velvet sometime soon,” Prancer said.  “I’ve just got to make amends for old wrongs first.  Can’t ask her to marry me when the last momentous event in our lives was me being a screwup.”

“The prison thing?”

“Everything before, too.  Trying to be better.”

“I don’t want to step on any toes or get into anythin’ too sensitive here,” Moose said.  “But can I ask?  Would be easier to not step on toes if I can ask.”

“It’s the whole thing.  Get powers as a kid, sixteen years old, make friends with the right people, start dealing.  It’s an elevation in status, y’know?  I was the guy who the cool kids in high school went to for product.  Had money, had girls throwing themselves at me, I was invited to all the parties, and I meet Velvet there.  One of many girls in one of many cities.  But she gets powers and comes back to me, wants in, wants out of her house, especially.  I oblige, and she doesn’t make me regret it.”

Moose nodded.

“Years pass, we find our fit.  She’s got more financial sense, I’ve got the salesmanship.  Most capes, there’s going to be conflict.  She’s got her thing, you know how her power works.  She hangs around somewhere, and this dust collects, and she can telekinetically control stuff, more dust there is on it.  It’s how she gets that fucking truck going again, when it refuses to move.  She makes us sit there for five minutes and then gives it another try, and it works, and she’ll fiddle with it later and get it tuned up just enough it starts going.”

“She must care an awful lot about it,” Moose observed.

“She does.  But that’s her whole psychology.  She wants to settle in, wants to have a place she can call hers, whether it’s that truck cab or, I don’t know, going upstairs.  I get restless.  The mover thing.  That causes friction.  But we work despite it.  We’re as soulmate as you can get when you’ve got… whatever these things are giving us our powers.  Parasites.  You had the visions when we were on the battlefield, that day.”

“Sure,” Moose said.

“As yin-yang soulmate as you can get with these things screwing up the fit,” Prancer said.  “But we got comfortable.  I graduate school, barely, she graduates a year after me, we keep up the routine.  Some wheeling, mostly dealing.  The parties every weekend, tooth and nail fights because we’re both the type to flirt with others, before we realized we were fine just not worrying about it.  Couple more years pass, I’m twenty-one, she’s twenty, still in the routine.”

“A rut?” Moose asked.

“Just the way things were.  Somewhere along the line, you know, I’m twenty-seven, she’s twenty-six, and I’m still boning boys and girls from high school.  Still partying.”

Moose’s eyes had widened.

“Legal, mind you,” Prancer said.  “But… sketchy, in retrospect.”

“More than a little, no offense,” Moose said.

“None taken.  I deserve it.  I didn’t realize until they came after us.  Capes, police.  You get into a groove and you don’t think about things and somehow a decade gets away from you.  You’re not the cool guy people are excited to get to know.  You’re the guy they’re into because they have to be if they want a discount, or if they want someone accessible that’s older.  Sad.  Pathetic.  Slapped me in the face while people were talking to and about me in court.  Forced me to take a long, hard look at who I was and who I wanted to be.”

“That’s good,” Moose said.

A young woman entered the restaurant.  Prancer almost thought it was the first of the influx, but she was alone.  She was an older teenager or twenty-something, with long white hair, wearing a black dress and black makeup, and she took a seat alone at the table.  She rummaged in a bag to find a book.

The waitress approached her, kettle already in hand.  The money was passed across the table, and the tea was poured.  A regular.

Her mask was so simple it might as well have not been there.  Curious, too, that she’d come this far to read a book.  Maybe someone would be joining her.

Prancer watched the new arrival, but he kept talking, “She told me, over and over again, I needed to be better.  That she wanted better.  That we needed to be careful.  I didn’t listen.  We got out of prison, she took me back, and I owe her for that.”

“If your critical flaw was not listening, might be you’ve gotta listen when she’s saying she loves that vehicle out there.”

Prancer nodded slowly.  Then he let his head loll back, and he groaned.  “I’ve put up with that thing for so many damn years.”

Velvet’s glass of beer slid across the table, and Prancer caught it just before it could reach the edge of the table and tip into his lap.

“You’re talking about my truck?” Velvet asked, making her way back from the restroom.

“Moose is telling me to let it go,” Prancer said.  “I’m trying to come to terms with the idea.”

“You’re a good boy, Moose,” Velvet said, taking her seat.  The glass pulled out of Prancer’s hands, sliding across the table to slap into Velvet’s hand.

“Appreciate that, Velvet.”

“Did you order or did you forget?” she asked.

“Remembered,” Prancer said.  “It’s coming soon.”

The front door opened.

A large collection of capes entered and immediately headed off to find their booths and tables.  One of the new arrivals stepped inside and loitered by the door.  She was a woman with a slender figure and a bag over her head, for lack of a better description.  The bag was cloth, with a pink animal pattern on it.  The rest of her form-fitting outfit matched, including the shawl she wore.

Prancer leaned in the direction of the door, putting his mouth near Velvet’s ear.  “I see Nursery.  I wonder if Blindside is around.”

“I hope the kid’s okay,” Velvet said.  She looked at Moose.  “Were you there when we talked to ’em?”

“I was.”

“They were up to something.”

“I remember.”

A man in armor was one of the last to arrive.  The armor was white, and looked like it was fashioned of strips, woven and wound around him, the ends left frayed and sticking out to the sides and behind him.  There was no face to it.  Only a Y-shaped set of ridges.  He stood between Nursery, a man in a black outfit and heavy hood, and a heavyset man with long hair, a dense beard, and a mechanical arm that extended to the ground.

At his arrival, people across the room started applauding, from Ripcord to the people at the counter, to the white haired girl and the woman with the mask.  Even the kitchen staff.  The man in armor laughed, the sound mingling with the general applause.

Moose joined in, and Velvet and Prancer offered their own light, confused applause.

“Thank you.  Thank you.  Is Marquis here?” the man in armor asked.

The old man at the kitchen pointed skyward.  “Roof.”

The man in armor saluted, then ducked back through the door.

Velvet raised her hand to get Nursery’s attention.  The woman’s group was already splitting up.  The man in black joined the people in white armor.  The bearded man with the mechanical arm walked over to the woman with the claws, sitting in her booth.

Nursery approached the table.

“Good to see you,” Prancer said.

“I didn’t think I would see you three all the way out here,” Nursery said.

“We’re trying to see who’s out there.  The other places have been a little seedy.”

“They are.  Seedy can be fun, though,” Nursery said.  “Reminds me of the old days.”

“You keep updating your costume,” Velvet said.

“Silly thing, isn’t it?  It’s easier to make a new one than to wash the blood and slime out.  I feel ridiculous.”

“What was happening with the applause?” Prancer asked.

“Mission success,” Nursery said.  “In a roundabout, unexpected way, but that’s often how these things go.”

“Congratulations,” Moose said.

“Thank you, Moose.  It was a thing.  We took a week to figure out what we were doing, we had to check with a few people, a number of thinkers, make sure we weren’t stepping on toes.  The peace being what it is, we didn’t want to cause too much trouble.”

“Was it a big mission?” Prancer asked.

“Big,” Nursery said.  “Plenty of room for things to go very wrong, with some bad repercussions that could be felt by everyone.”

Prancer’s eyebrows went up.

“But we were careful, we had the right people-”

“You included among those people,” Velvet said.

“Yes,” Nursery said, clasping her hands together.

“What was the job?” Prancer asked.

“To kidnap someone, and have her disappear for long enough that people would get upset about it.”

“Huh,” Prancer said.

“They’re anxious out there.  They feel powerless.  The idea was to pick someone controversial, and take them out of the picture.  Make them the topic of debate.  Is vigilante justice right or wrong?  In this case, where the wrong isn’t so terribly wrong?  Well, that was their idea.  I do think she did something horrible.  It’s why I agreed to the job.”

“What was that?”

“Hurt a woman and made her miscarry.  They say it was a mistake.”

“I can see where that hits close to home.”

“Sorry to hear,” Moose said.

“Thank you.  You’re kind.  The plan was to provoke the debate and raise the issue before things reached a more critical point.  Venting off the steam before things exploded.  The debate seems to be trending that way.”

“Sounds like it needed a fine hand,” Velvet said.  “That’s some good work.”

“I didn’t do it alone,” Nursery said.

“Your first time working with the others?”

“It was.  Lord of Loss is sweet, good at what he does.”

“He went straight to the roof, I’m guessing that means he isn’t the type to work with B-listers like us.”

“No, I suppose not.  He doesn’t like being indoors.  You’re recruiting?  That’s what you’re asking after?”

“Or looking for a spot of work,” Prancer said.

“Snag, sitting over there, is looking to hire people for a project down the road.  He wants to do test runs first, make sure he succeeds on the first try.  Those two hired the same information broker we worked with for that job.”

“You had an information broker?”

“She was ops too.  Talked to us on the earpieces.  A little shaky on some things, surprisingly quick on others.  But I think you run into that with any thinker.”

Prancer nodded.

“Snag is a few months new, a rookie, with a rookie’s mindset, but he has good instincts.  If I can say this in confidence…”

“Of course,” Velvet said.

“…I wouldn’t want to be on a team with him long-term,” Nursery said.  “He’s mean.  Unkind, impatient.  Emotional.  You get that with a lot of the new ones.  Too close to whatever set them off.”

Prancer nodded slowly.  “Old ones have their own problems.  Ruts and routines.”

“They do.  Um, I should hurry.  Blindside has a mouth but I do like them.  They do a decent job, if you can work around the limitations.  They’re outside now, sitting on the patio by the side door.  Can’t come inside without turning a few heads.”

Prancer smiled at the bad joke.

“Kingdom Come likes his bible verses, I earned some considerable brownie points by knowing the names and numbers to go with most of them.  Benefit of bible school until I was eighteen.  He’s a consummate professional.  Very gentle, very efficient.”

“Expensive?” Velvet asked.

“Not too bad, I don’t think.  I don’t know what he was paid, but if it’s close to my own wage, it shouldn’t be horrendous.  He’s very selective about the jobs he’ll accept.”

“What about you?” Prancer asked.

“Me?  I’m boring.  I’m not even a parahuman, not really.”

“Wait, what?” Moose asked.

“I’m not,” Nursery said.  She had a light tone of voice, like she was smiling from the other side of the cloth mask.  “It’s why I feel so out of place in costume.”

Prancer watched as others came through the door.  He recognized Biter but failed to get Biter’s attention with a wave.

“How does that work?” Moose asked.

“Show him the bump,” Velvet said, smiling.

“The bump?” Moose asked.  “Oh.”

Prancer glanced over at Nursery, who was holding her cloth costume tighter against her stomach, showing her slightly protruding belly.

“They’re the parahuman,” Nursery said.  “I’m the ride.”

“Oh,” Moose said.  “Oh wow.  Sorry.”

“No need to be sorry.  It’s a bond unlike any other,” Nursery said.  She gave Moose a pat on the cheek.  “It’s hard sometimes, but I owe it to them.  Making up for mistakes I’ve made.”

“Yeah,” Prancer said, staring at his beer.  He looked from his glass to Nursery.  “Don’t be too hard on yourself, hm?”

“I’ll try,” she said.  “I should go.  Take care and wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” Moose said.  He still looked shell-shocked.

“What’s next?” Velvet asked, smiling.

“What we did yesterday is only one instance.  They’ll have to do it again when the pressure builds.  Sooner or later, however many thinkers they work with, however good the people they hire, there will be a mistake.  Something will happen, it could be too much, too little, and then everything goes to hell in a handbasket.”

“Heavy,” Prancer said.

“But I’ve stayed too long.  My baby and I earned ourselves an invite upstairs, because they might hire me again, and because we showed our stuff, I don’t want the offer to expire,” Nursery said, excited.  “We can’t drink at the bar, but it’s still a chance to meet some of the people running the corner worlds, the major players.  A huge opportunity.”

“That’s amazing,” Moose said, looking down at the bump.  “Congratulations.  Both of you.”

“You’re so sweet.  I should go, excuse me,” Nursery said, leaving.

“We’ll talk again,” Prancer said.

Velvet raised a hand, her smile frozen on her face.  Prancer reached over to squeeze her thigh.

“I think I hate her now,” Velvet said.

He gave her leg another squeeze.

His thoughts turned over as he watched the people enter.  Some headed upstairs.  Ones with nice costumes, scary ones.  He recognized quite a few.

There were also the others.  The B-listers, the dregs, the people who weren’t yet established, filling up the ground floor, ordering their food and drinks.

“Hey Moose,” he said.

Moose stared off into space, in the direction of the stairs.

“Moose,” Velvet said.  “I’m pretty sure she’s a loon.  I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

“Moose,” Prancer tried again.

Moose frowned, glancing back at the stairs.  “Yeah?”

“Look at the room.  Tell me, who do you know here?”

“Some of the big guys.  Biter, you and I had drinks with him.  Etna, Crested, Beast of Burden, Bitter Pill, Nailbiter, Hookline, Kitchen Sink.”

“Do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Round ’em up.  Anyone you get along with, who you think wouldn’t cause a fuss.”

“What are you doing?”

“Still figuring it out,” Prancer said.  “You recognize anyone?”

“Few people.  You want me to gather ’em?”

“Please.  We might have to take it outside.  Actually, let’s definitely take it outside.  By the side door.  So the owner doesn’t complain.”

“You’ve piqued my interest,” Velvet said.

Prancer nodded, still lost in thought.  He watched as she walked away, pausing to feel a moment of fondness for her, and then resumed his thinking.  He made his way to the side door.

“Hey,” Blindside said.

“Hey.  Gathering some people.  Thought we’d come to you, invite you to hear me out.”

“Thanks, Prancer.  What’s this about?”

“Give me a second to think.  I’m a salesman, and I’ve got to figure out exactly what I’m pitching.”

“Sure.”

Prancer stuck his fist out, stopped where Blindside’s power made it stop.  He felt Blindside tap a fist against the side of his hand.

The others assembled.  The people who had been invited, then the people who hadn’t, who were curious.

“I want to organize,” he started.  “I’m not the person to lead it, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a power play.  I’m not a power player.  But I think, right now, while we’re still at peace, while there aren’t so many people who have beefs with one another, or the beefs have had two years to go quiet, this would be the chance to do it.”

“You wouldn’t be the first person to think about doing this,” Biter said.

“No?”

“No, some other groups, some small, some large.  They’re banding together, a mutual peace.  Forming a set of rules and expectations that aren’t unwritten, that we actually discuss and work out.”

“With the little guys?” Prancer asked.  “B-listers?  Those of us who aren’t being focused on while the big guys are laying out tracts of territory and settlements?”

“Some of them.  Those groups are smaller than you’d be talking, if you’re talking about everyone here.”

Prancer nodded.

He glanced at Velvet, and he saw the way she was looking at him, and he felt like a proper man for the first time.  She reached for his hand and squeezed it, hard.

Then, more alive and excited than he’d seen her in a long, long time, Velvet spoke, “You think they’d be open to talking?”

“I think they might,” Biter said.

“The Wardens are cooperating with seven major cape teams and, last I checked, ten minor teams.  We are not a monolithic entity.  We are not an authority.  We are not the bad guys, Julia.”

I rummaged through a cabinet.  My life was in boxes, from my clothes to my hair and skin stuff to my files.  If it were that alone, it would have been tolerable.  I’d tried using logic and going to the most common sense places.  Not in or among the dirty dishes, not in the various jars and vases of spoons and spatulas on the counter, not behind or under something.  I’d checked the other rooms in the apartment.

“People are worried.  You have Legend as a second in command, and memories aren’t so short that we don’t remember the Alexandria fiasco.”

I moved methodically through the kitchen, left to right, while the television played on a low volume.

“I can tell you this: all we want to do is help.  We want to find the right capes for the major crises and we want to equip the teams out there with information and resources. “

“That’s admirable, but-“

“No, wait, hold on, Julia.  You told me when you asked me to have a chat with you on camera that you wanted to have a conversation.  Let me say this.”

I looked at the little TV in the corner of the kitchen.

“…that people are going to draw on what they know to fill the blanks, when they don’t have enough information.  I understand that the closest parallel that many Americans draw to the Wardens is the PRT.  Give us time to make our impression and show how we operate,” Chevalier said.

“Would you not say there are quite a few of those blanks when it comes to your organization?” the reporter asked.

“I accepted this interview because I want to fill some of those blanks.”

“Are you an open book, then?”

My eyebrows went up.  That was dirty pool from reporter Julia.  There was no way that question wouldn’t be followed by something that Chevalier couldn’t or wouldn’t want to answer, cornering him.

“Some of those blanks,” Chevalier said, stressing the ‘some’.  “We’re still figuring things out, we’re still finding our footing and we’re negotiating a comfortable and healthy position with the public, the various teams under our umbrella, teams that aren’t under our umbrella, and the authorities.  The lack of answers and the number of blanks isn’t me being evasive or underhanded.  It’s that the Wardens and society as a whole have a lot of figuring out to do.”

He was good at what he did, and he did a lot.  I wished I was in a position to study what he was saying and how he was fielding the questions, but I had more hunting to do.

I went back to the drawers I’d already checked, pulling out the cutlery drawer enough that I could check the back, behind the tray that held the forks and knives.  I was too used to drawers having a mechanism that stopped them once they were pulled out to their limit, and I’d expected it to be longer, which led to me pulling the drawer straight out of its housing.

I only barely caught it, sticking my knee out under it and moving my hands to grab the sides.  The cutlery rattled loudly, with a few miscellaneous cheese and holiday themed knives clattering to the floor.

“…would you say about the rumors circulating around Valkyrie, then?”

I put the drawer on the countertop, collected the fallen knives, and sorted through the contents, lifting up the tray to make sure nothing had fallen beneath.  No luck.

I tried to put the drawer back, failed a few times before realizing that the construction wasn’t especially sturdy, and that the back end had pulled a bit loose.  I fixed it, then resumed trying to put it back inside the hole it was meant for.

There was the saying: affordable, nice, or safe and sane.  Pick one.  It was a chronic problem with the speed they were trying to get buildings and houses up.  Shoddy construction, rush jobs, cut corners, mistakes, and general ugliness were pretty normal.  I was hopeful that in a little while we might be able to get to a point where it was ‘pick two’ instead of ‘pick one’, but we had a ways to go.

I tried to squeeze the end together where two pieces didn’t quite meet and simultaneously push it in with my stomach.  It refused to slide in.

“What are you doing to my kitchen?”

Crystal was in the doorway, her hair a mess.  She wore an oversized t-shirt and pyjama shorts, and she still looked half asleep.

“Did I wake you?” I asked.

“Uh huh,” she said, sleepy.  “Don’t tell me you’re a morning person.  That would be a problem.”

“I’m not.  I’m a person who fell asleep early last night-”

“Almost right after eating.  Yep.  And now you’re up, showered, dressed, and you’re dismantling my kitchen.  For reasons.”

“I woke up and thought I’d keep my normal work routine while I figure out what I’m doing.”

“Renovating my kitchen?”

“I’m trying to find scissors,” I said.  “I’d settle for a sharp knife.”

Crystal smiled wide, her eyes still sleepy.  She grabbed a glass from a cabinet, and she half-walked, half-floated across the kitchen.

“Don’t laugh,” I said.

“You’re such a cliche,” she said, as she passed me on her way to the sink.  “Oh my god, Victoria.  You’re that person with super strength that trashes everything she touches.”

“Just help me,” I said.

She reached over and helped me hold the drawer together.  As it slid into the confines of the front of the counter, the framing held it together where the drawer’s own construction wouldn’t.

“I wasn’t using my super strength, for the record,” I said.

“Yeah.  I’ve done that with the drawers before, I’m just making fun of you.  It’s a funny image, to walk into the kitchen and see that.”

“Ah ha,” I said.  “Then can I make fun of you for having two big jars of spatulas, whisks, spaghetti scoops, having two food processors-”

“One was a gift.”

“-And no scissors or shears anywhere I can find?  I’d settle for a sharp knife.  You have those steak knives, but they look nice and I don’t want to use them for the wrong thing and ruin them.”

She reached across the counter to get the package of bacon, holding it up.  It was inside a hard plastic tupperware-like container with a small black and white label stuck to it.  A mark stamped on it had it sourced from another world.  Even without the mark, the pricetag might have given it away.

“Thought I’d treat you to breakfast,” I said.  “Went for a walk to get some stuff.”

Still appearing half asleep, she moved one hand, creating a deep red forcefield behind the bacon, then she produced a thin laser from her fingertip, slicing off the end of the package.

She handed the bacon to me, open end up.

“You don’t have scissors?”

She shook her head, smiling.

I sighed, picking up the bowl where I’d already mixed the dry ingredients.  “Fruit crepes, bacon on the side?”

“Sounds amazing,” she said, leaning against the counter, eyes mostly closed.

“You look beat,” I said.

“It was pretty unforgiving, being there.  I timed everything so I could unwind starting with the barbecue, and unwinding didn’t happen.”

I nodded.  “Sorry.”

“That’s not on you.”

“I’m still sorry it happened.”

“You slept okay though?”

“I slept a solid ten hours.  I just… started sleeping at six thirty or something.  Then I woke up, I started thinking, and I decided to be productive.  I’m talking to some teams today.”

“If you want me to put a good word in with my guys, I’d be happy to.”

“I don’t want to do the quasi-military cape thing,” I said.  “A little bit too intense.”

“Yeah,” Crystal said.  “I’m so physically tired, two days out, that I’m not sure I would be standing if I couldn’t fly.”

I looked down at the ground.  Her feet were barely touching the ground.

It wasn’t the physical intensity that worried me.  It was the mental and emotional cost.  It was the fact that when it came to the military and the military-like stuff, the trend was to beat the individual into shape.  Organization, conformity.

I couldn’t take much more of the harsh lessons on identity or the forced redefining of the self.

“I’m just waking up, so forgive me if I got something wrong, but did you already find a place?”

I shook my head.

“You  took the sheets off the couch.”

I looked over at the living room.  There were boxes stacked around, and only half were mine.

“You said you might have friends over at some point, I thought it’d be weird if you had to navigate around my stuff, so I moved it out of the way.”

“Okay,” she said.  She paused.  “I’m tired, so I want to make sure I say this right.”

I went to the fridge to get the fruit stuff I’d already prepared.

“I don’t care,” she said.  “First of all, I know I have a lot of stuff.  You know I have a lot of stuff.”

I looked at the stuff around the kitchen and adjacent living room.  It was a bit messy, to the point counter space and table space was occupied.

“Just- I really don’t care if you add your stuff to it.  I like my places feeling lived in.  Some of the stuff is a friend’s, and they’ll take it when they get set up.  Some is mom and dad’s.  Some is yours, and that’s fine.  That leads me to my second point.  I want you to be here.  I want you to feel comfortable.”

“Thank you.”

“I know my couch isn’t much, but you need a place that you can kick your shoes off and leave them where they are.”

I might have mentioned that I wasn’t quite that personality type, but I held my tongue.  I understood the sentiment, what she wanted.

“I want you to have a place that’s yours, Vic.”

⊙

“I’ll start by asking this: why not be independent?”

Foresight had a strong aesthetic running through their costumes.  Primary among those things was a mask or helmet design where each of the members of the team lacked eyeholes.  Helmets with opaque visors, masks without eyes.  The aesthetic involved lots of paneled body armor and loose fabric elsewhere, with iconography worked into the panels.  It made me think of ninjas from movies, with the mix of lightweight costumes and armor, but without the Eastern style.

Their team symbol was a stylized eye, sans pupil, with a wildly exaggerated ‘4’ struck out in bold lines that extended well past the curved lines of the eye.

I was wearing my best civilian clothes.  I’d opted to leave the mask off.  I sat in a chair.  Two of them sat in chairs in the office, and another two stood at the side.

I gave my answer.  “If I’m being entirely honest, independent doesn’t pay unless you’re really good.  At the risk of sounding arrogant, in another time and place, I think I could scrape by because I do have that experience, I have the knowledge, and I can hold my own.”

“You don’t think you could do it now?” Countenance asked.  He was the second in command and the highest ranking team member in the room.  His outfit was heavier and draped more than the others, both in how the cloth hung loose and how the armor panels were connected so they dangled from the piece above.  The Foresight icon was in the center of his mask, like a cyclopean eye.

“I know who Foresight is and how you operate,” I said.  “I know you want to move forward, you’re interested in helping the little guys, tackling the right issues, and take decisive, needed action in a calculated, smart way.”

“You read our webpage.”

“I’ve been following Foresight since it started,” I said.  “Whatever answer  you give me today, I’ll be following you guys from here on out, because I think it’s important to know the lay of the land.  Which goes back to what I was saying.  Being calculated, being smart.  I’ve been watching and researching you guys, and I’m sure you have the mentality where, from the time I reached out about an interview, you were looking me up and asking questions.  Which means you heard about the incident at the Norfair community center.”

“Yes.  We talked to your reference about it.  I imagine he talked to you?”

“He didn’t, but he’s busy and this interview happened on short notice,” I said.  “Everything that unfolded there and a lot of what I see elsewhere, it suggests that it would be really hard to make it as an independent.  Too many want to blame parahumans for what happened, and both independents and fledgling teams are easily targeted.  Established teams absorb and diffuse that impact.  That aside, being part of a team, cooperating, having the information and sharing that information, it’s too crucial.  That’s why I’m not going independent, given the chance.  I want to help build something.”

Countenance nodded.  He reached over to his friend, who handed over the paperwork he’d been reading.  He looked down.  “Your reference sang your praises.”

“He’s a great guy.  I really respect what he’s trying to do with something as tricky as the patrol block.”

“Our problem, when it comes to assessing any candidate, is that each person we add to our teams is added strength, added power, but they’re also a possible set of complications.  It forces us to strike a balance.  We’re smaller than many of our peers because we’re selective.  We want to make sure anyone we add will be a good fit, with minimal complications.”

“I reached out to Foresight first, to you, because I like how you do things.  It’s what and who I want to be.”

“Then my next question to you would be what you think is going to happen next,” Countenance said.

“What I think is going to happen?  I think trouble is incoming.  We see hints of it, the out-of-control triggers, we hear about some scary monsters and then the big names go and try to handle it, then we have other circumstances where the big names are running off to go handle things that they don’t tell anyone about.  I think those situations might be worse than the monsters.  So far, Gimel is untouched by the worst of it.  We’ve been on top of things.  But sooner or later, something is going to hit us that we aren’t prepared for and can’t neatly handle.”

“What do you think happens then?”

“I think it depends a lot on us having the right information and tools.”

Beside Countenance, Anelace was nodding.  Anelace was a young guy, his costume the opposite of Countenance’s in how it was tighter-fitting, his mask bearing a dark gray dagger illustration on the right side of the white surface in the same exaggerated style the ‘4’ was drawn on the emblem on his chest.  The knotted area where hilt, blade, and the two prongs of the guard all met was located where one of his eyes would be.

“You said you know how we operate?”

“Support work with the megalopolis and police, patrols and events for the day to day.  Several times a week you make calculated, strategic strikes on priority targets.  It’s like what the Wardens are doing with the big, scary threats, but you’re more city-focused than whatever’s going on outside of Gimel.  A lot of your members go on to work with them, which is why you have openings.”

“She does her research,” Anelace said.

“She does,” Countenance said.  He said it in a way that suggested he was admitting it, almost reluctant.

My heart sank.

I looked over my shoulder.  The two at the side of the room were Effervescent and Relay.

Effervescent was an emotion manipulator with an emphasis on stunning people.  Relay was capable of some complex moves with teleportation I wasn’t sure I had a grasp on, most of which seemed to amount to them teleporting to where others were, shunting that person to a random position elsewhere, and he also had some ability to communicate without words, both sending and receiving.

“Can I ask?” I asked.

“Ask?” Countenance asked me.

I indicated the pair.  “I get the impression they’re communicating something to you, and you sound like you’re winding up to tell me no.  Both took some shifts at the portals, watching the refugees as they came in to make sure there was no trouble, which makes me think they’re thinkers, they read people, and they’re reading me.”

Countenance turned his head to fix the cyclopean, drawn eye on the pair.

“I can’t get a consistent read on you emotionally,” Effervescent said.  “It’s repressed.”

“My long-time boyfriend was an emotion manipulator.  He had a hard time getting a read on me too,” I said.

“I’m better than most when it comes to getting reads,” Effervescent said.  “No offense, but it’s what isn’t as repressed that concerns me.”

“Enough you’d say no,” Countenance said.

Effervescent nodded.

“Relay?”

“My read was fine.  Minimal secondary noise.”

“Sorry,” Countenance said.  “For reading you without permission.  It’d be a point in your favor that you caught on, but-”

“But you have to put stock in what the others say.  No hard feelings,” I said.  I made myself smile as I stood from my seat.  Countenance stood too.  He shook my hand.  “I’ll see you around, I hope we can work together then.”

“I hope so too.  Good luck,” Countenance said.

“Let me get the door for you,” Anelace said.  He jumped to his feet and opened the door for me.  His voice was quiet as he said.  “Sorry to see you go.”

The thinkers would have noticed that.

I wondered what Effervescent and Relay would be reporting about my emotional state as I left.

⊙

“Mrs. Dallon?”

I stood from my seat in the waiting room.

The cape had a costume that looked like a suit, metallic silver fabric, with a black dress shirt underneath.  His mask consisted of two panels that met and ran down the center of his face, creating an almost beak-like profile with how the two sides swept along the sides of his face and back.   Not bird-like, but as if his entire head was the beak.  The hair I could make out above the ‘v’ where the mask parted was longer and heavily styled.

It reminded me of the Ambassadors from Boston, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t have worn suits as ostentatious as this, nor such a dramatic full-face mask.

“You didn’t come in costume?” he asked.  He sounded surprised.

“I’m pre-identity adjustment,” I said, caught in trying to find my footing with my rehearsed explanation as I simultaneously crossed to where he was to shake his hand.  “Moving on from the identity and methodology I had as a teenage heroine.  I’m a blank slate, and there’s a lot of room to adjust my brand moving forward.”

“Are you ex-Protectorate?” he asked.  “I might have missed that if it was in your application.”

“No.  Ex-Ward, but only very briefly.”

“I only ask because you went straight to the term ‘brand’.  I’m used to hearing it from people who were in the PRT and people from other corporate teams.  I know I read your file and there was no mention of a corporate background.  I’m Lark.  You’ll meet Dido soon, all going well.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Lark.”

“My office is this way, if you’ll join me,” he said.  He briefly touched the small of my back to guide me in the direction his other hand was indicating.

I was bothered by the contact.  Unsolicited touching, the presumed closeness, and the fact it was a hot day, my back was damp from the walk and he would have felt that.

It was such an unnecessary thing and it made both of us uncomfortable.

“Brockton Bay,” he said.

“Yes.  From birth to Endbringer and immediate aftermath.”

“A mom and pop small town team?”

“Aunt and uncle and cousins too,” I said.  “Extended family.  They passed the fifteen year mark with just donations and small events.  I think that counts for something.”

“It’s better than what Dido and I have managed, but give us time.  We have five parahumans on the team, and we’re already in the black when it comes to the business end of things.”

“I spent most of my childhood watching my mom balance the books, I did the events, the photoshoots, the merchandising as a PRT-acknowledged team.  I have something of a sense of what you’re probably going for.”

“Ah, the merchandising.  I think I have your PRT trading card from that time period in a binder in my office.”

I smiled.  “Which one?  I had one that was holographic, which you could swipe through the controller for the video game to have me as a polygon-rendered helper, and the higher quality one that had the bio on the back.”

“I think it was the second one.  My office is through this door.”

I took a seat opposite the glass-top desk while he closed the door.  He undid the button in his suit jacket before sitting down.

“Typically those of us at Auzure like to work with new parahumans,” he said.  “They’re easier to brand.  When we work with capes with a history, we like that history to be a strong one.”

“I think you get the best of both worlds with me,” I said.  “Most people assumed I was dead when everything happened in Brockton Bay, and nobody corrected that misunderstanding.  If you do dig up information about me, a lot of it is strong.”

“I think that’s where we run into problems,” he said.  “A lot of your history and presence is tied into your family’s group identity.  ‘Glory Girl’ isn’t famous beyond a certain range.  Hometown heroine, yes, with some people in Boston and New York who might know of you, but not famous.”

“Then consider me new.  Untainted by the past.”

“I would, but we use things we term perception turns, or just turns.”

“I know the term,” I said.

“I like that you do.  Branding, turns.  You do seem to know what you’re getting into here.  When we’re tracking someone’s marketability, we map out the turns.  You’re fine, nothing exceptional, for most of your career, with an upturn if you count your disappearance, after the Slaughterhouse Nine.”

I took a deep breath, then nodded.

“But if we include your family, there’s a lot of baggage.”

“You could say that,” I said.

“Downturn, death of Fleur.  Downturn, times when New Wave was subsisting, but not in the eyes of the media.”

“Four adolescents and two couples, there were weeks where school or work took priority.  That got better as my cousins and I got older.”

“Cousins… and your sister?” he asked.

I felt the shock like it was cold water.

He continued, “I think if it were up to the turns and the background alone, it would have to be a no.  At the time you should have been drawing the most attention, given your age and potential, you… died, as you put it.  You were gone for the two years before Gold Morning.”

“Yes,” I said.

“We’re offering cape services for the reconstruction, with Spell offering some massive assistance with the agriculture.  It’s a big part of what’s driving us to the front pages, giving us some upturn in the most general sense, for public perception.  What we really want is the human angle, something where we could have an attractive young lady like yourself in a photo op, or your sister-”

“No,” I said.

“Her and the right person in a photograph?  If you two paired up, Auzure could make you big.”

I winced, and I stood from my seat.

“Victoria?”

They hadn’t accepted the interview to get me for me.  I was just a stepping stone to the person they really wanted.

“Thank you for your time,” I said.

I managed to restrain myself from slamming the door on the way out.

⊙

“Thanks for meeting us out here,” Whorl said.  He didn’t shake my hand, but instead reached out to clasp my wrist.  I clasped his.

“Not a problem,” I said.  I looked up at the structure that had been erected around the portal.  It cast a shadow.  “It’s nice to be in the shade, with a decent breeze.”

Whorl wore a blue mask with a white border around the eyes and outermost edge, and his costume was a ‘preppy’ bodysuit, complete with a folded collar, like a polo shirt, a narrow belt, and leggings.  His icon was large on his chest, a circle with angled spokes at the edges.  He had an armband with the gold morning symbol on it, but the colors were the blue and white of his costume.

He grinned, showing off white teeth.  “You should have been here at noon.  It was brutal.”

“The people weren’t too irritable, with the heat?”

All around us, people were coming through the portal, forming lines.  There were buildings to the left and right of the street that people were heading into, to get the instructions and things necessary to start their lives in Gimel.

“I think they were happy for it,” Whorl said. “I’ve been going back and forth, and it’s miserable on the other side.”

“I just realized I got us started on a conversation about the weather,” I said.

“I’m kind of a weather manipulator, not really, but it’s fun to say.  Talking about the weather happens more than you’d think, when it comes to me,” he said.

Again, that smile with those very white teeth.

“I read up on you online,” I said.

“Ah, did you?  Should I be flattered or worried that I’ve been stalked?”

I was reminded of the segment on television, the reporter trying to corner Chevalier by getting him to claim a certain attitude.

“It’s not stalking,” I said.  “I’m doing my homework, is all.”

I had to admit, the preppy look with the wide shoulders, narrow waist, clean cut and nicely taken care of, it appealed to me, and it had always.  Not that I was even remotely thinking of actually moving forward with a relationship.

“I’m probably going to have to duck out and handle some minor crisis or another, but stick around and don’t disappear on me, we’ll find the time and figure out if we can place you with the Attendant.”

“That’d be great.”

“If I get caught up in something, find one of the others.  Chat with them, they’ll tell you what they think of the team.”

There were a few other capes distributed across the crowd.  It was interesting how people seemed so keen on them, even approaching them, happy to see them.  The sentiment of blame hadn’t gripped the refugees here.

A teenager with a moon design on her mask and dress-like costume.

I saw a humanoid mech the size of a car, with a glass tank for the ‘body’, something large and fishlike within the tank.   The mech sat on its ass, feet sticking out, and children were crowding around to tap the glass and climb on the feet.  The tinker, as I took it, was the one sitting on the suit’s shoulder.  Another cape was standing on the end of a rod, three stories above the ground, the end of the rod stuck into the side of the building.  He looked stern as he looked down at the scene, his arms folded, until someone waved up at him and he waved back.

“Is that the whole team?”

“Not even close.   With the teams merging, we’re taking on a lot of others.  We’ll be breaking up into three sub-teams later, but all with the same name and brand.”

“I don’t know if I’m hurting my chances saying this, but I’m kind of crossing my fingers you guys are going with the Shepherd’s name and brand, but the Attendant’s approach.”

Whorl smiled again.  “We might be.”

“I like the approach,” I said.

“How do you interpret it?”

“Giving people security.  Moving slowly, with measured steps, informed by the lessons of the past.  You guys seem pretty focused on taking and holding territories, improving neighborhoods.  After what happened at the Norfair community center, I think giving people time to get used to capes again is key.”

“I think it might be,” Whorl said.

Above, the cape that was standing on the end of the horizontal pole whistled.  As we looked up, he pointed.

“That’s my cue,” Whorl said.  “No pun intended.  I’ll be right back.”

Whorl headed toward the building that the people were filing out of, moving at a light jog, with a fog-like nimbus building at his shoulders and arms.

I looked at the various capes, debating my options.  I worried that flying up to say hello to the one at the end of the pole would spook him and make him fall from his roost, and I wasn’t that keen on flying.

That left two options.  The tinker or the teenage girl with the moon iconography.

I made my way toward the girl, because she had less people around her.  The crowd was a bit of a tide I had to work against.

“Stuck?” I heard a voice.

I turned my head.  It was a man with tattoos, a cleft chin and eyes that looked like he was perpetually squinting, even in the shade of the gate that housed the Bet-Gimel portal.  He was talking to a couple.

“It’s a big decision.  We’re not farmers.”

“It’s hard, getting started again,” the guy with the tattoos said.  “The tent cities are rough, while you wait for an available apartment.  You can work your ass off, earn fake ‘dollars’ that might not have value in a few weeks or months, you sweat, you hurt, and everyone around you is doing the same.  Stinks, when everyone’s working that hard and getting only a few minutes to shower.”

“We’ve heard of things like that.”

“If you want another option, we’ve got a settlement at Canaan.  Small city, even.  Or a big town.  We’ve got extra rooms, food, and dangerously strong alcohol.  We’re still trying to figure that out.”

I heard the rustle of papers.

“Canaan?” I asked.

“Yes.  Have you been?”

“I’ve heard stories,” I said.  I turned to the couple, “I’m ninety percent sure the Canaan area is Fallen territory.  Outskirts of the megalopolis.”

“We’re not really holding fast to all of that anymore,” the guy with the tattoos said.  “We said the world would end, we tried to draw attention to it, the world ended, we were right.  Now we make the best of things.”

“That seems like a pretty skewed take,” I said.

He rolled his eyes as he looked away from me.  He turned back to the couple.  “You have the directions.  Easy to catch a bus to New Haven, catch another bus to the Hartford Stretch.  Go to the address, we almost always have someone with a ride waiting there for the buses, to drive you into Canaan.  The hard work has been done, it’s easier, it’s more fun, and there’s actual community.  It’s one of the things that’s strangely missing from most parts in this city.  You’ll notice that.”

“Maybe,” the guy from the couple said.  “I’ll keep this.”

“McVeay, Crowley, or Mathers?” I asked.

The guy shot me an annoyed look.  “What?”

“Which family branch were or are you?”  I asked.  I turned to the couple.  “Three branches, each loosely themed after one of the Endbringers.  There was a nascent fourth in twenty-thirteen that was based on one or all of the other three, but I missed the memo on that.”

“Crowley,” the guy said.  “We were the jackasses.”

“McVeays were the ultra-religious, more violent ones, loosely themed after Behemoth,” I said.  “Mathers were the ones themed after the Simurgh.  They’re still around too, they did a lot of the kidnappings of kids and capes, with intent to force marriages.  Then you have the Crowleys, who were a little bit more than jackasses.  Stirring panic, scaring people, violence.”

“To draw attention to the imminent end of the world,” the guy with the tattoos said.  “Do you want us to apologize for trying to get people’s attention and failing?  Or should we not have tried?  We were right.”

“Is there a problem?”

A woman’s voice.  I thought it was the girl with the moons on her costume.  It wasn’t.  Another woman with tattoos, with friends.  One of the tattoos was of a bat-winged schlong.  Another was of a cartoon character I didn’t recognize getting spit-roasted, in the metal pole, open fire sense.

She had others, but I couldn’t see enough of them to tell what they were.  I could guess they were similarly tasteful.  Her top was tied at the sternum, exposing ribs and stomach.

“Just a bit of one,” I said.  “You guys are openly recruiting from this crowd here?”

“Recruiting is an strange way to put it,” the guy with the tattoos said.

I looked at the couple.  “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Free rent, free food, drinks, company?”

“Cheap rent,” the woman with the tattoos said.  “A lot of people stay just long enough to make some extra money while commuting to Hartford and paying rent to us.”

“All we ask is that people who decide to go make sure to tell people that hey, we aren’t assholes,” the tattooed guy said.

“We aren’t assholes!” the burly guys who were keeping the woman company cheered in near-unison.

“Which Crowley is in charge?” I asked.

“Hey, bitch,” the woman said.  “Just move on.  Fuck off.”

The cheering had drawn attention.  The teenage girl with the moons on her costume approached, ducking beneath one of the burly guy’s arms.  She spotted me, saw that last exchange, and drew close to me, putting one hand on my shoulder.

“You’re the one Whorl was talking to?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Take it from me, it’s not worth it.  Come on.”

The guy with the tattoos smirked.

“You know they’re recruiting here, right?” I asked.

“We know,” she said.  “We’ve drawn attention to it.  We were told to keep out of it, so long as they behave.”

She put pressure on my shoulder, urging me to move.  I took one step back.

I didn’t want to let this go.  I would have more regrets if I walked away.

“Which Crowley?” I asked.  “There were three brothers and one sister, last I heard.”

“Doesn’t matter,” the tattooed guy said.

“Eldest brother was a murderer, got ousted from the family for that, back in twenty-eleven, when the Fallen were still minor.  But around the time their numbers swelled in twenty-twelve, early twenty-thirteen, he got accepted back, head of the Crowley branch.  He killed two of his own family members after that.  I think that matters a lot, since if he’s in charge, you can’t really call yourselves mere jackasses.”

“Not him.”

There were a few more faces appearing in the crowd.  Unfriendly.

The girl with the moon design leaned in close, murmuring in my ear, “They have someone with powers in the crowd.  They send people out to fish for recruits, and if there’s trouble, they have these reinforcements summoned into the middle of the crowd and they’ll shout you down.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Middle brother and the sister were pretty skeevy too.  They didn’t kidnap anyone directly, but they networked with the other families, gave shelter to some McVeays who needed to duck the attention of the law, and they traded a few of their family members for some of the kidnapped minors and capes the Mathers family had.  I’d be concerned about going to that camp.”

“The little brother,” the guy with the tattoos said.

“The party animal,” I said.

“That’s what we’re about!” were the shouts.  There was more of a raucous response from the other reinforcements.  Cries and shouts of ‘party’.  People throughout the crowd were looking.

“He’ll try to steal your girlfriend before he makes you welcome!” I had to raise my voice to be heard.  The people who were pushing forward made it harder for me to see the couple.  “It’s not worth it.  You can look him up at a library.  Jake Crowley!  Four wives, all half his age!”

There were shouts and bellows of denial, a few swears directed my way.  One ‘cunt’, from someone close enough to have punched me if he’d felt the desire.

“Throw away the paper,” I called out.  “It’s not worth it!”

With the press of bodies, I didn’t see the paper get thrown away.  But I saw the guy hugging his girlfriend closer, I saw the fractional nod.

That was all I got.  The moon girl pushed me harder, and I allowed myself to be pushed this time.

I walked backward out of the crowd, looking at the group.  They were still making a lot of noise.

Whorl was waiting for me as I made my exit from the thicker part of the crowd.  The mech tinker was standing on the head of his suit, now, and the suit was standing too, which gave him a decent vantage point overlooking everything.

“It’s going to take an hour before they settle down,” Whorl said.  “What was that about?”

“Fallen recruiters,” I said.

“I know that much.”

“I wanted to make sure the people they were talking to knew,” I said.  “Told them who the family was, how they operated, who the leader was.”

“You think they listened?” Moon girl asked.

“They might have,” I said.  “I didn’t get the impression I was going to start a riot, so I thought I’d be okay trying.”

“Nah,” Whorl said, “Your impression was fine.  No riot.  They know to keep their hands to themselves, and just to be loud.  They stick to the rules so they can keep coming back.  We were told to let them, which sucks, but we have to work with the authorities.”

“I told her that,” Moon girl said.  “That we were supposed to leave it be.”

“Before or after she stirred them up?”

“Before,” I answered for her.  “I knew, I went ahead anyway.”

Whorl frowned.

“I knew it would probably cost me my spot on the team,” I said.

Whorl nodded slowly.

“But if it stops one person from going over to that town of theirs… I guess it’s worth it.”

“It might have worked,” Whorl said, “But they’ve got the reinforcements, they’ll double down.  They’ll try harder, make up for it.”

“You guys are all about learning from the mistakes of the past,” I said.  “Paying respect to the casualties.  You have to know they can’t be allowed to get a foothold.  They’re too monstrous, and the people they’re going after are too vulnerable.”

“They have a foothold already,” he said.  “We’re the guys who failed to stop the end of the world, and they’re the ones who were right about it.  To some people that’s all that matters.  It doesn’t matter that they’re scumbags or that they’re dangerous.  Not everyone, but even one out of every thirty is a lot.”

“We should go calm things down,” Moon girl said.

“Yeah,” Whorl said.  “Distract the people from the tattooed hooligans.”

“Good luck with that,” I said.

“Take care, Victoria.  Keep fighting the good fight, whatever you end up doing.”

I gave him a casual salute, two fingers of one hand touching my brow.

I braced myself, both in balance and emotionally, then took to the air, moving slowly.  I raised myself up to the same level as the guy at the end of the pole, staying within his field of vision so I wouldn’t surprise him.

They were using the powers to teleport people in.  I couldn’t see where the fade-in happened or where the teleportation destination was, but as the crowd shuffled, there were more of the people with tattoos, trashy people, and people that didn’t look like refugees.

The guy on the end of the pole pointed.  I moved closer to him, and followed the line of his arm and finger to see.

A man with a daughter, sitting on a blanket at the base of a fence.

“The girl or the man?” I asked.

“The man.  He’s the one bringing them in.  Keeps the kid close as a shield, in case someone catches on.  Different kids, some days.”

I nodded.

“I think every day of going over there and taking him out of the picture.  Letting him know I know.”

“Wouldn’t be worth it,” I said.

The noises of the crowd of Fallen increased, a fresh chant.  Heads were turning and people were smiling, because they didn’t know, and positivity and high energy meant a lot when they were as tired and despondent as they were.  Some would have spent a long time waiting for their chance to come through.

A dangerous and vulnerable thing, to have no place to go.

There was something to be said about the fact that the hospital was still in construction while it was running.  There were patients in the waiting room, sitting in the chairs that had been bolted to the floor, and the unhappiness of needing a hospital visit was compounded by the fact that a third of the way across the room, behind a plastic sheet that had been taped to walls, ceiling and floor, a team was using power tools and calling out in loud voices as they built the rest of the room.

The hospital staff looked pretty miserable too, most of them sequestered on the other side of a counter, walled off from the patients by a plexiglass window.  Security guards stood off to one side.

“Can I help you?” a secretary asked.

“I was wondering if it was possible for me to see a patient?”

“Visiting hours are open.  Patient’s name?”

“Fume Hood.  I don’t know her real name.”

The secretary stopped, then looked at the male secretary, who sat at the other end of the counter.  She looked past him at the security guard.

Of course.

“I was one of the people giving her medical attention when the ambulance arrived,” I said.  I knew it wouldn’t matter, that they would assume I’d been lying, but I hoped it would temper the reaction.

“She’s not accepting visitors,” the secretary said.

“One second,” I heard.  A female voice.

Two overlapping sections of the plastic sheet peeled apart.  Tempera ducked through, and put the tacky sides of the plastic back together.  She was dusty from plaster and streaked with paint that wasn’t from her power.  She wore overalls, a black t-shirt for a top, and had a different pattern to the paint she’d applied over her eyes with fingers, more like she had applied it to her fingers and pressed them to her eyes as a series of vertical bars, each bleeding into the one beside it.

“Hi, Victoria,” she said to me.

“Hi.”

She looked at the secretary, “We know her.  Can I take her back to the room?”

“Let me get her information, and I’ll buzz you two through.”

I took the clipboard with the paperwork, and I filled out the information, checking my phone to remind myself of the specifics of Crystal’s address.  She took the clipboard, read it over, and let us through.

We walked down the back halls of the hospital, past individual clinics and their signs and separate waiting areas, past patient rooms and nurse’s stations.  Tempera indicated the turns.  We didn’t rush it, an unspoken agreement that we’d take our time, have a chance to talk.

“There was one attempt on her life.  We were worried there would be another,” Tempera said.

“Are you standing guard?” I asked.

“I am keeping an eye on things, but mostly by accident.  I’ve been helping with the construction.  I like getting my hands dirty,” Tempera said.  She smiled as she held up one hand, which was covered in wet white ‘paint’ down to the elbow, the paint turning black before transitioning to her light brown skin.  “Look at you, though.  You look tidy.”

Tidy.  It was an amusing choice of words, when Tempera looked anything but.  I smiled.  “Looking around to see if any teams are looking to fill positions.”

“And?”

“Only one was actually posting any openings, a corporate team, Auzure.  Foresight and the Attendant were open to interviewing me.  There are two other big teams; one gave me a hard no, and the other is folding into the Attendant and won’t exist soon, they didn’t give me a response yet, and with how the talk with the Attendant went, I don’t think it’d work out.”

“They’re pretty conservative.  In a lot of respects.  A lot of the religious capes went to the Shepherds and will be part of the Attendant.  I’ve been paying close attention to that.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “One or two of the sketchy people from Empire Eighty-Eight, too.”

“Empire Eighty-Eight?  They sound familiar.”

“They had a presence for a while.  A few years back they broke up into two other groups.  The Pure and Fenrir’s Chosen.”

“Ah.  I know the Chosen.  They were linked to the Clans, I think?”

“Yes.  The Clans spread out across multiple cities, and would funnel anyone who got powers over to the Empire Eighty-Eight core group, back before Leviathan broke the group’s back.  They were a background element in my childhood and cape career.”

“Ahh.  Was that a factor in your wanting to join?”

A very carefully neutral question, that.  I wondered if she was prodding me, not declaring a stance while feeling me out.  I was still an unknown, in a way.

“Violent racists on the team?  Definitely a factor, big point against.  Question is, are they ex-violent, ex-racists?  Gets muddier.  Even then, I might draw the line there, and not join.  If they were contrite?  I could roll with that, I think.  Barring one or two especially scummy individuals.  Interview didn’t get far enough for me to raise the subject.”

Tempera nodded, not saying anything.

“I think… maybe I’m being unsubtle, saying it, but I think there’s a big difference between who those guys were and who Fume Hood is.”

“I think so too.”

“How is she?”

“She’s hurt by what happened.  It’s hard, to put yourself out there, face your shortcomings, try to be better, and get shot for it.”

“Partial facing of shortcomings, from what she and I talked about,” I said.

“It’s why I said face, instead of ‘admit’,” Tempera said.  “But I don’t want to quibble.  Change of subject.  You said your meeting went badly.  Can I ask what happened?”

“Fallen,” I said.

“Did you get in another fight?”

“No,” I said.  I sighed.  “No.  They did what they often do, they caused a disruption, and that’s a playing field that suits them well.  I’d call it a draw, but I’m pretty sure they’re still out there recruiting and I’m not out there counteracting that.”

“There will always be bad guys.  They will always be out there.  There will always be murders, there will be theft, there will be drugs.”

I nodded.

“Question is,” Tempera said, “Where do you want to be, in relation to that, as it happens?”

“That is a deceptively tricky question,” I said.

“You definitely put yourself out there, backing us up when things went sideways at the community center.”

“I really appreciate that you see it that way,” I said.

“You put yourself in front of Lord of Loss.  I don’t know how your power works, but it’s obvious you can bleed.  There was some danger there.”

I acknowledged that with a small nod.

“And now you’re interviewing for teams?  So soon after?  It sounds like you want to be out there, helping.”

“I do.  I’m zero for three, though.”

“You don’t want to be independent?  Hold on a second.  We’re nearly at the room, but let’s finish talking before we go in.”

We stopped midway down the hallway.  A nurse’s station was a short distance away.

“I-” I started.  “I think, the way things are going, I might end up going that way.  Teams are a complication of their own.”

“They are,” Tempera said.  “I had a phone call earlier, offering a position.  I can go right there and sign the paperwork if I want to.”

“With?”

“The Attendant, as it happens,” Tempera said.

I was momentarily lost for words.  She’d been doing what I’d thought, inviting me to answer without declaring a position, but from a different angle.

“I want to wait and see how the merger with the Shepherds shakes up, how it feels after, they said not to wait too long.  It’s decent money, decent exposure.  A lot of decency.”

“Don’t let what I said change your mind on anything.  I’m griping, it’s-”

“It’s fine,” she said.  “I invited you to gripe, if we’re going to use your word.  It’s interesting to hear that take on them.  I didn’t know about the racist ex-villains joining.  I’m curious about how they handled the Fallen there, too, in your situation.”

“I think, uh, don’t tell them I said this…”

“Of course.”

“…I think they or the people they’re taking guidance from are approaching that stance of there always being bad guys to deal with, and they’re deciding to conserve their energy.  To not fight that fight.  Maybe it’s right to.”

“You got a draw.  That’s better than a win for the bad guys there.”

“It’s- yeah,” I said.  “I tried to use reason, draw on the stuff I studied, old knowledge I had about the group.  Who they were, how they operate, the families, the names.  Put that information out there, so the potential recruits would know the key facts.  I tried to get them to say who their leader was, pressed the issue, and of course it was the least bad one, so the argument I was gunning for didn’t have much clout, and I lost steam.”

“I picture the Fallen as a group that’s pretty comfortable defying reason.”

“Them, yes.  The recruits, I think they were open to hearing it.  I threw out some more information I remembered at the last second, but the Fallen were getting pretty loud, I didn’t want to start a riot, and that was more or less it.”

“And the Attendant?”

“Weren’t keen on me making a point of things when the word from on high was to let the Fallen be.  I didn’t get my invite to the team.”

Tempera made a face.

“I don’t like ignoring the monsters.  And I do think the Fallen are monstrous, as a collective force.”

“They’re a headache I was always glad I wouldn’t have to deal with,” Tempera said.  She scratched her nose as she scrunched it up, the paint there highlighting the creases.  The scratching deposited more paint on the bridge.  “One I guess I’ll have to prepare myself for dealing with.  Or possibly not dealing with, if I take the Attendant’s offer.”

“Possibly,” I said.  “Don’t give my words too much weight.”

“I’ll try to be sensible about it.  I might end up asking those questions you didn’t get a chance to, if that’s okay.”

I nodded.

“I think I’ll be okay, whatever happens.  The Wardens facilitated Attendant’s contact with me, and from their tone, I think they’d push to get me on another team if I didn’t go with that one.”

“That’s great,” I said.

“I could put in a word for you.”

“I wouldn’t say no,” I said.  “I don’t think I’ll get my hopes up, either.”

Tempera frowned.

“Sorry.  I didn’t mean to sound negative.”

“Are you finding your way, with these setbacks?”

I shrugged.  “Complicated.  Just wanted to check in on Fume Hood, while things are quiet.  When the law or the system fail to outline a process, do what seems right.  When it’s not clear what’s right, go with the law.  When neither is clear, reach out.”

“For perspective?”

I shrugged.  “That too.  More eyes on a problem never hurts.”

“Another point for the team, instead of going independent,” Tempera said.  She looked back down the hall, in the direction we’d been walking to.  “Hold on a moment?  I’ll check if she’s decent.  I wouldn’t mind bringing Fume Hood into it, now that we’re past the semi-confidential stuff about other teams.”

I nodded.

She touched the wall by the door as she rounded the corner, stepping into the room, and she knocked on the door as she entered.

There was a brief pause.  The handprint of paint on the wall dropped to the floor with a splat as Tempera said, “Come in.”

The blob of paint on the door fell to the ground as well.  Both moved along the ground as I entered, spattering against the back of Tempera’s shoes and the back of her overalls.

Fume Hood had donned a mask, but she didn’t wear the hood.  She lay down on the bed, which was angled so she could sit up at an angle.  A blanket had been pulled up to her waist, covering her legs.

Crystalclear sat in the chair between her and the window, the crystal configuration on his head slightly different than before.  He wore a t-shirt and shorts.  There was something odd about a guy with crystals where his eyes and hair would be having very ordinary hairy legs.

“Heya,” Crystalclear said.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hey, patrol girl with a name I can’t remember,” Fume Hood said.

“Victoria,” Tempera volunteered.

“Victoria.  Right.  Thank you for helping to hold my blood in,” Fume Hood said.

“You’re very welcome,” I said.  I noted the flowers and cards sitting beneath the window.  “Sorry I didn’t bring anything.  This is my awkward ‘I was in the neighborhood’ visit.  I saw the hospital name and remembered you were brought out this way.”

“I’ve got too much as it is.  Turns out that the key to popularity and acceptance is to get yourself shot.”

Her tone was light, almost amused.  Tempera had said Fume Hood was hurt on an emotional level, but I didn’t see a sign of it.  I could remember how Tempera had acted on my first meeting with her, how in tune with her team she had been.  I was willing to put a lot of stock in her take on things.

“Victoria, what I was going to say, before deciding I’d rather say it here, was that we’re going our separate ways, yes-”

“Longscratch is already gone,” Crystalclear said.  “But I don’t think he was ever going to stick around on a permanent basis.”

“Yes,” Tempera said.  “Which is a shame.  I do hope he finds what he’s looking for.  My point is, I don’t want to lose touch.  It’s helpful and nice that Crystalclear happened to be here to help illustrate that maintenance of contact.”

“Happy to take credit,” Crystalclear said.

“Victoria said- if you don’t mind me repeating?”

“No.”

“She said that it’s important to reach out, if I’m recalling that right.  I’d like to stay friends with you,” Tempera said.  “Crystalclear, Fume Hood.  Victoria, you too.”

“Why?” Fume Hood asked.

“What do you mean?” Tempera asked.

“We’re very different people,” Fume Hood said.  “I don’t get how that works.  How do you stay in touch with people you have very little in common with?”

“Easy.  Grab a bite sometime,” I said.  “Sandwich, beer or soda, share stories, get different perspectives.  I wouldn’t mind.”

“That’d be nice,” Crystalclear said.

“But-” Fume Hood started.  She frowned.  “Okay, whatever.”

“You should find the words for what you’re trying to say,” I said.  “In case it festers or gets in the way.”

“I dunno.  I don’t get why you’re here.  I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong.  You put pressure on my wound, Tempera gave me first aid and used her paint to keep me from dying.  I probably owe you my lives.  But that whole fiasco was my fault.”

“I blame the attacking villains, not you,” Tempera said.

“Yep,” Crystalclear said.

“Are you trying to be clever and get me to keep being a hero, then?” Fume Hood asked.

“I’m here because I was interested in how you were doing,” I said.  “Obviously I’d prefer it if you stayed a hero, but that’s not the objective.”

“If you guys keep showing up with flowers or to make small talk, you make it awfully hard for me to fuck off and go back to being a villain.”

“That’s a plus,” Tempera said.  “But like Victoria said, it’s not the main point.”

“On the topic of pluses,” I said, “I’m interested in who those guys were.  So if you hear anything, I wouldn’t mind a heads up.”

“The guy who shot me did so of sound mind, no Kingdom Come in play.  Independent, apparently.  No money in his accounts, he didn’t have internet.  He was just pissed off.”

“There were the villains, too,” I said.

“There were.”

“And we don’t know what they were after,” Crystalclear said.

“Multiple conflicting stories,” I said.  “Blindside lied to me when I asked.  It bothers me, and I worry it’ll happen again.”

“Give me your cell phone number,” Tempera said.  “I’ll get in touch.”

There was a brief pause while we sorted things out, me getting the contact information from each of the others, and giving them mine.  They already knew each other.

Reaching out, making and maintaining contact.

A part of me had hoped that Fume Hood was wrong, that the team wouldn’t have dissolved, that they’d be together, willing to give things another try.  That it might have been a team I could join.

“The cards and flowers might have something to do with how you’re the topic of the moment,” I mused aloud.

“I heard something about that,” Fume Hood said, indicating Crystalclear.

“From me,” Crystalclear volunteered unnecessarily.

“If you guys were to try again, there could be more attention, more support,” I said.

“More gunshots?” Fume Hood asked.  “I’m stepping down and going into hiding.  I’ll recuperate, let the heat die down, and then figure out what I’m doing.”

“If it matters, I think more people are siding with you than not,” I said.

Fume Hood nodded a few times, taking that in.  “Weird.”

“It’s good,” Tempera said.  “I think Crystalclear already accepted the offer from Foresight, though.”

“It was a very promising offer.”

“And I’ve been contacted by Attendant.  I don’t know what I’ll do with that.  And Victoria-”

“Is not having much luck,” I said.  “But I want to do something.”

“You were thinking you might go independent?”

“Which doesn’t pay,” I said.  “Not in this environment.”

“How does that work?” Fume Hood asked.  “If you’re a crook, it’s easy, you take jobs at the villain bar, or you rob some place, or any number of things.  You just… go out on patrol?”

“There are a few other things to do,” I said.  “One way is to essentially run a protection racket that isn’t a racket.  It’s easy for that to go wrong.  There’s a higher level effect, which is easier to pull off when, say, a city has a downtown area and the shop owners gather together to pay a wage to the hero that draws attention and has a positive influence on their area…”

“Things have to be stable before that happens,” Tempera said.

“We’re not there yet,” I said.  “There’s training and support.  Offering powers for helping with the rebuilding, which Auzure was doing a bit of.  There’s merchandising, but that’s a dead market right now, I think.”

“We fished in that pond prior to getting underway and we didn’t get any bites,” Crystalclear said.

“I was selling my brain, I know a lot about capes and the community, having grown up with it.  That job’s done, and I don’t know if there’s much more opportunity for that.”

“Tell you what,” Tempera said.  “I’ll put out feelers.  See what people say.”

I nodded.  “Sure.  Thank you.”

⊙

I was lost in thought enough that my retracing of my steps on the way out of the hospital turned me in circles.  I approached the same nurse’s station for a second time, and I stopped at the desk, waiting for someone with a spare moment to give me directions.

I wanted to do something.

There weren’t any openings.  I was pretty sure Advance Guard had turned me down because of my background, the two year gap prior to Gold Morning.  Others had their reasons for rejecting me.  As it was, the field was fairly cluttered.  Villains were keeping their heads down.  As much as there was always going to be the bad guys, like Tempera had said, we didn’t have the systems in place to identify them or address them.

No way to make money off of my powers, to pay the rent and get out of Crystal’s borderline uncomfortably cluttered place.

“Yes?” a nurse asked.

I blinked.  I didn’t ask her for directions.  My thoughts went in another direction, spurred to life by my thoughts of the unpaid cape work.

“If I said ‘crisis points’, would that mean anything to you?” I asked.

“It’s been a long time since I heard that.  Yes, it means something.  Do you work with capes?”

“I… kind of am a cape.  Would you be open to me giving you a hand?”

“Let me look into it.  I’m not sure what the usual methods are, and it’s not fresh in my mind.”

“You’d want to identify the key patients, check with any parents, if they’re under eighteen, and they often are.  Then with me, you’d want to check with legal, you can call my references, which I do have on hand…”

⊙

The mask wasn’t the quality sort I was used to, more of a Halloween costume.  The top I wore was a men’s small, a little too big in the shoulder, while it simultaneously squashed my chest.

From the ages of the patients in the pediatric wing, I wasn’t sure they would pay much mind to my chest, squashed or not.  Most were twelve or younger.  A few heads turned, people paying cursory attention.

I still wore the skirt I’d worn to the interviews, the belt.

Room 5, bed C.

I entered room five.  There were four beds, one in each corner.  One monitor was beeping, the other kids were lying down, looking bored.

Bed C was a little girl, with a face chock full of freckles, and sandy blonde hair.  The curtains had been partially closed, blocking the views of the boy sitting to her left and the girl sitting across from her.

“Audrey?” I asked, peering in.

I saw only a glimpse of misery on her expression, while she stared off out the window.  Then she raised her head and the expression was gone.  She assessed me, head to toe.

“Great,” she said, after she was done.

“Great?”

“Ooh, yay, it’s Legend, except he’s a girl now,” she said, sarcastic.

The t-shirt I wore was styled after Legend’s costume.  The mask was the same.  Something the staff had kept on hand from the past Halloween.

“The nurses pointed me your way,” I said.

“Well, my day sucked, but now fake Lady Legend is here, so I’m all better.  That’s great.”

“I can take the mask off if you want,” I said.

“Oh, no, you can’t do that, fake Lady Legend.  Your secret identity might be compromised!”

The sarcasm ran strong through this one.

I pulled the curtain closed a bit more, then pulled off the mask, flying a bit as I said, “I never really had the secret identity.”

With that, at least, her eyebrows went up.  No smart retort.  She moved around her hospital bed, craning her head to see my feet, trying to spot the trick.

“I don’t know you,” she said.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said.  “The nurses mentioned you’d had an especially bad day.”

Again, that momentary look of misery.

Yeah, I knew that.

“Back before everything turned sour, when I’d come to the hospital, with, um-” I stopped, drew in a breath, and sighed.  “It’s something heroes would do.  Check in on people who had really bad days.  And when I came to the hospital, sometimes I’d do that.”

Crisis points.  More a PRT thing than a New Wave thing, but we’d done a small share.  Looking out for the recent triggers, putting our faces and names out there, staying in touch with the public.

“A nurse sat down with me for a while,” she said.  “No offense, I appreciate it, but I’m kind of talked out.”

“Instead of talking, um,” I said.  I showed her what was in my hand, letting the straps dangle.  “What would you say about going flying?”

I saw her eyes go wide.

“The hospital called your dad’s work.  He said it was okay.”

⊙

My feet left the hospital rooftop.  Flying was unwieldy, especially with my burden.  I was untrained.  Having the benefit of my forcefield to protect me in the event of a crash would mean having my forcefield up, and that had other connotations, with my power as distorted as it was, the fact that I couldn’t necessarily control the movements or know what they would do.  Not doable, when I held someone.

There was uncertainty too.  The source of that flight, it had never let me down, but if push came to shove, in a crisis, would my maneuvering be sloppier?  Would I decelerate or accelerate in a different way?  I’d carelessly trusted my power, once, and now I wasn’t sure I could.  I knew what the source of that power was, now, and what its goals were.

It was emotionally heavy, even as I felt almost weightless physically, to be reminded of what had changed so dramatically.

I could feel my charge’s intake of breath, as I held one arm across her lower ribs.  I didn’t trust the harness we’d grabbed from the physio center.  Not enough to hold someone for me.  She was strapped with her back to my front.

The ground was a good ways below us now.  I hadn’t even ascended that fast.  I’d been a little lost in thought.

I felt her laugh, nervous and small, while I turned us around, giving her a view of the area.  Norfair and its community center was off in the distance, one way.  The farms were off in another direction.  From here, it was easy to see the tall buildings of the city, the places that looked like a slice of the old world.  To look to the fringes of those areas, where the tents and shoddily erected structures stretched off, so endless it seemed they reached to the horizon.

“I got you,” I said, in answer to the nervous giggles.  Had I laughed like that, on my first real flight?

“Yeah,” was the response, a small, quiet voice.  Then more giggles.

The giggle became laughter on her part, borderline hysterical.

“You okay?”

She nodded, fast and fierce, then drew in a deep breath.

“Wooooooooo!” she whooped, top of her lungs, loud enough to be heard on the ground.

“Hood up,” I said, reaching up to tug the hood of her hoodie over her head.

“What?  Why?” she asked, panting from the cheer.

“Just in case it’s cold,” I said.

“Cold?  Why-”

Before she could fully catch her breath, I dropped from our position, diving, fast, hard, and surprising enough that even I felt my stomach’s contents lurch.

She didn’t have the ability to cheer, as the drop stole what little breath she had, but her arms went up and out, to either side of my shoulders, fingers spreading to feel the wind, the sun-warmed air.

I smiled, letting the swoop dash all of the other thoughts and feelings from my mind, vicariously enjoying the experience of flying for the first time.  Of flying at all.

⊙

“Juan?” I asked.

Juan was younger than the other kids had been.  Eight, if I had to guess, but he wasn’t well, so that might have screwed up my estimation.  He was thin at the arm and wrist, and puffy around the face.

“The first time I came to the hospital, one of the nurses wore that costume,” Juan said.  “He was a guy though.”

“How does it look on me?” I asked.

“I think it looks really nice,” he said.  “You’re very pretty.”

“Thank you,” I said.  “That’s sweet.”

“Some of the others were saying a lady superhero was going around taking people flying.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “That’s the plan.  Your mom and dad said you might enjoy it, and you should be well enough.”

“They had to go to work,” Juan said.

“That’s what I heard.”

“They always have to go.  Even when I have bad days.  And there’s nothing on television.  There’s only three channels and they’re real boring.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I really hate hospitals,” he said.

I took a deep breath.  His words echoed my feelings, which only magnified the feelings.

Yeah.  I really hated hospitals too.

“It’s getting dark,” I said, “But if you want to try flying, maybe that’d be a bit of a break from the boring stuff, and a break from the hospital.”

“Thank you,” Juan said.  “But flying sounds like it’s very tiring.”

“It can be,” I said.  “I can go slow if you like, or we can do something else.  We could talk.”

He nodded at that last bit, then started looking around.  I pulled up a nearby chair, and sat down next to his bed.

“I got a lot of books,” Juan said.  He deposited a stack of kids’ books and comics on the edge of the bed, between me and him.  “Uh, before.  I said I didn’t want to be stuck here and be bored, my mom went and came back with books and comics, and then they both left.”

“That was nice of them,” I said.  I picked up one of the books.

“My eyes are tired today,” he said.  “The letters are blurry.”

“Do you want me to read some out loud?” I asked.

That got me a firm nod, and the first smile I’d seen out of him.

“Good Simon to start, then?” I asked.  Another nod.

There were pictures, so he shuffled over to the edge of the bed, and I sat on the other side, my ass half on the bed’s railing, and I held the book between us, so we could both see it.

Two good Simon books, which were most likely aimed at someone just a bit younger than Juan was, but he didn’t seem to complain.  I moved on to a comic involving the robot prison ship, peeking ahead so I could skip past the scenes which were aimed at someone much older than him, and then, to be safe, moved on to something aimed at a younger age again.  Kids in animal masks getting into trouble.

There wasn’t much likelihood that Juan had powers, but he’d had a bad day, and this was okay.

I was halfway through that book when I saw someone look in at the door, peeking around.  A boy.  He stopped as he spotted me.

I finished the page, then paused, partially closing the book, and checking on Juan.  Fast asleep.  I checked his pulse, because I was paranoid, then fixed his blankets, and eased myself up off the bed with flight, to not disturb him.

I used a notepad by the side of the bed, and wrote a brief farewell:

Nice to meet you, Juan.  The nurses have my number so if you want to go flying sometime, we might be able to arrange something.  🙂
-Victoria

I walked over to the door.  It wasn’t one of the ones I’d taken a flight with.  Older, thirteen or so, with what might have been his first pimples.

I saw the hesitation on his face.

“Come on,” I said.  “Let’s go to the cafeteria.  It’s late, I don’t think many people will be around.”

He nodded.

⊙

“Hello?”

“Tempera?  Hi, it’s Victoria.  I’m sorry to call you so late.”

“It’s fine.  I don’t sleep much, and the call is more than welcome.  Why the call?”

“I’m at the hospital, talking to someone-”

“You’re still at the hospital?”

“Yes.  I’ve been talking to a teenager, he’s listening in on my half of the conversation right now.  He’s got a friend with powers, but she’s not doing so hot.  It’s new and it’s scary and neither he nor she know what to do.”

“We’ve been there.”

“We’ve been there.  Yeah.  I know you’re in touch with the Wardens.  They’re decent, they have a lot of resources, they have some good people.”

“Absolutely.”

“He can describe particulars and you can let them know.”

“Not a problem.   Just so you know, it might be hard to get someone on the phone this late, but if it’s a problem, I know some people I can round up and we can go talk to her as a big supportive group.”

“Great.  I’m going to hand you off now.”

“Wait, one second.  Victoria.”

“Yes?”

“Call me back when this is over, or call me first thing in the morning.  I was sounding out some people, it’s not an invite to a team or anything, but with something this messy, we need all the hands we can get.”

“Messy?”

“I’ll explain later.  For now, we help your buddy there.”

I handed the corded phone over.  We stood at an empty nurse’s station in a hallway where the lights had been set dim.  My hands were free, and I’d intentionally used their phone so my own would be free.

There were other calls I needed to make, including one to Crystal to let her know where I was.  I put that one off.  Crystal was easygoing.

I sent one to Mrs. Yamada.

Me:
I know your caseload is full, but found a kid with some power-related troubles.  Contact is reaching out to Wardens soon.  Maybe you can keep an eye out to make sure all goes smooth?

The boy was explaining in a hushed voice about his friend’s circumstance.  An uncontrolled, messy power, and she had no place to go.  He hadn’t given me many details, but I could tell he was scared, and I could infer from that that she must be terrified.

The reply came back.

Jessica:
Absolutely.  I can’t promise I take them as a patient but I can help with initial moves.

I nodded to myself.

The boy was relaxing as he talked on the phone.  A distant, authoritative, kind voice, and the promise of some answers or help.

My phone buzzed again.

Jessica:
A patient canceled for later this week.  Do you want to meet for a late lunch?  There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.

 Previous Chapter                                                                                             Next Chapter

It was dark as the boy and I stepped outside.  It was a flipping of perspectives, in a way, that the city lights were going out and the tent villages off in the distance were lighting up with lamps and fires.  The city had only a small fraction of the light it might have had in the old world when power rationing wasn’t in effect, only a tenth the normal number of apartments were lit up.  Only the major roads had light, and that meant far less people were driving, which meant less head and tail lights.

It was cool out, not as cold as it had been last night, thankfully.

It was five minutes before Tempera met us at the door.  She looked a little worn out, but then again, she’d gone to the hospital, gone home, come back to the hospital, and she was juggling something with the messy situation she’d talked to me about.

“Hi Victoria.  Hi Sam.”

“Hi,” Sam said.

“On a scale of one to ten, how serious is your friend’s situation?”

“Uh.  Six?  She’s depressed, she’s scared, she doesn’t know how to use her power, and I can’t get near her to help her.  She’s afraid people are going to take her away.”

“How immediate is the situation?  Does she need help in the next five minutes, next hour, today?  Is she or anyone else in danger?”

“She’s alive, but I’d like to get her help soon.  She’s freaking out and I don’t know what to do.”

“I’m only asking like this because it’s an emergency, and since our talk on the phone it’s escalating.  I’m going to take you to the Wardens headquarters, okay?  I’m going that way already, I can walk you through the security and introduce you to some people, and they’ll have ideas on what to do with your friend.  Sound good?”

“Sounds alright.”

“What’s the emergency?” I asked.

“Citizen labor is going nuts.  They’re massing, pulling in some outside help, a lot of other angry and frustrated citizens.  I don’t have the full picture yet, but it’s all hands on deck.  Wardens are coordinating Advance Guard, Foresight, Shepherds, the Attendant and others.  They’re even bringing in the PRTCJ capes, which haven’t exactly been advertised to the public.”

Crystal’s group.  The situation was bad enough to open the can of worms that was capes serving as a military-adjunct force?  In this climate, no less.

Tempera went on, “I and some of the other prospective Wardens are being asked to go with the Wardens proper, to handle things where they’re getting out of control offworld.”

“Offworld?”

“I recommended you, said you’d help, they’ve given a tentative a-ok on that.  Things are expected to blow up when the city wakes up tomorrow, so it’s up to you if you want to help tonight or first thing tomorrow.  I sent you the address?”

“I got it,” I said.

“I should go.  Sam, with me.”

“Good luck,” I said.  “Sorry to pass the ball like this.”

“It’s fine.  Good luck to you too, Victoria.”

I checked my phone, waiting painful minutes for sites to load.

She’d said I could help tonight or tomorrow.  That things would get bad starting tomorrow.

The news sites already had multiple headlines with the word ‘war’ followed by a question mark.  And things were expected to get worse tomorrow?

No, I’d go tonight.

I’d fly, even.  I messaged Crystal.

 

⊙

I let myself into Crystal’s apartment through the balcony, using the key Crystal had given me on the sliding glass door.

“I’m here,” I called out.

I was about to step from the living room to the hallway when a red-tinted forcefield appeared across the path, blocking my way.

“One moment!” Crystal called out.

I turned my back to the forcefield and leaned against it, my arms folded.  “Can I talk to you from here?”

“Yep!”

“The headlines are saying war,” I said.  “And you’re being brought in.”

“Could go that way,” Crystal said.  “It’s wonky.  Two sides are butting heads and we’ve got another world that’s pretty upset.”

“I’ve only heard bits and pieces from some others and the news.  Is it a strike?”

“Not a strike.  I’m dressed now, you can come through,” Crystal said.  The forcefield disappeared, and I used flight to keep from falling, turning myself around before walking down the hallway and around the bend to Crystal’s room.

Crystal had already been in costume and with her group when she’d been ordered to get ready and be at the location within half an hour.  She was using the opportunity to help get me organized.  She’d showered while waiting for me, she’d donned her costume, and she was combing wet hair now.

Her costume was white, with her usual symbol on it, the arrow pointing down and to the side, with a stream of lines flowing from the back of the arrow, over one shoulder.  She wore a jacket with it, a near-black gray, given a faint magenta-red tint.  ‘PRTCJ’ was printed on the back in big white letters.  A lone stylized chevron was on the sleeve.

There were things to be said about it, about the militaristic tilt of the group, the way the PRT and the Protectorate had broken in such a way that the Wardens had sprung up from one large chunk of the image, presentation and ideals.  Crystal’s parahuman miltary thing was crudely forged from another chunk of what the PRT had been: the PRT’s old laws, rules, and discipline.  A military-esque force without a government to serve or a hard and fast system of law to back it up.

But it was Crystal’s call.  Crystal’s thing.  I held my tongue.

“My closet,” she said.  “Black trash bags.  Never throwing things away pays off.  It’s one of the sample batches.”

The bags made the clothes easy to find, even in the jam-packed closet.  The contents were hidden within the trash bags, the hooks of the hangers poking up and through.  Crystal indicated the bed, and I laid them out, peeling the plastic back.  White costumes without icons or decoration, a variety of cuts and styles.

It was a familiar range.  Back in the day, companies had periodically reached out to New Wave, wanting to pitch their product and get us to use them for our costuming.  Mom had handled those talks and periodically singled out a family member to send a bunch of proto-costumes to.  Later she would nag us for feedback that she could send the companies.

I didn’t want to think about mom.

I focused on the costumes, with some attention paid to the situation at hand.  The leotard cut was a ‘never ever’.  The full-body suit was problematic because of how it resembled Scion’s, and I didn’t want to go there.  Those were two I could eliminate right away.  I pulled the black trash bags down over them and set them aside.

Crystal explained, “People have been noting how fast we got back on our feet, and how we have something reasonably stable in currency and economy.  We kind of got our answer.”

“Yeah,” I said, before guessing, “powers?”

“I guess powers, probably,” she said.

I turned to look at Crystal.  She was arranging her damp hair over her eye, a curved swoop that her hairband held in place.  “Only probably?”

“This isn’t about powers,” she said.  “But I wouldn’t rule them out.  They helped and they may be part of this.  The key thing is that a lot of the building materials and resources we used to get started came from other worlds.”

“As in our people working in other worlds or-” I paused as Crystal shook her head.  “Or other, alternate civilizations.  Shit.  You don’t get anything of that scale for free.  What did we have to give them in exchange?”

“I have no idea,” Crystal said.  “I don’t think many people do.  There are two major groups heading the reconstruction that might have an idea but they haven’t shared.  One of those groups was the one who put out the trading dollar a few months after Gold Morning, now our de-facto regular dollar.  Same group that’s now looking at moving up into the greater political arena.”

“And those two groups are the ones butting heads?” I asked.

“No, the two construction groups are banding together, kind of.  The workers who have been doing the actual construction work seem to think they were promised a significant discount and first opportunity to buy the houses they’ve been building.  They’ve been living in a tent village, working long weeks, miserable conditions.”

“And if they think they have dibs on the houses, the work must have been a labor of love.  They’ll have a strong community too.  If they didn’t kill each other working that hard in conditions that bad, they must be close.”

“Yes,” Crystal said.  “One second, be right back.”

I glanced over the remaining outfits.  Three more options.  V-neck, long-sleeved, short skirt.  Not bad, but very reminiscent of ‘Glory Girl’.

Round neck, low enough to have a touch of cleavage, short sleeves, and shorts that cut straight across the upper thigh.  If any length were taken from them at all, they wouldn’t qualify as shorts anymore.  Hard to pull off.  I’d need to accessorize it and I wasn’t sure I could afford the time to dig for boots, belt, or other stuff I’d need, and still get filled in.

The last one had a high collar, a kind of truncated turtleneck, it was sleeveless, with leggings that ended in the mid-low calf.  Not bad but not great, and again, I’d need accessories.

Urg.

“The two construction groups are collaborating, banding together, the areas rezoned, contracts reworked.  They say workers signed and agreed, and there are no longer ‘dibs’, as you put it.”

“For something that matters as much as home and shelter, with that many employees, you’d think someone would have read the contract thoroughly enough to figure that out.”

“I have no idea,” Crystal said.

“Sounds like someone’s not being honest.”

“Again, Victoria, I don’t know,” Crystal said, sounding a little exasperated.  “I’m- we’re, if you’re coming, we’re not going there or being invited there to arbitrate or negotiate.  We’re not solving that particular problem.  We’re there to stand between the two sides, keep the peace.”

I glanced at her jacket.  “Just following orders.”

“Following orders, keeping things simple, letting others handle things,” Crystal said.  “Yeah.”

I nodded.  “Okay.”

I picked up the second costume, with the low neck, short sleeves, and short leggings, and held it up against my front.

“Go for it,” she said.  “You definitely need to dress that up.”

“I know,” I said.  “I’m going to go get changed and see if I can find footwear.  If you have a minute, could you find any belts?”

“Utility or regular?”

“Either or.  I like the idea of utility more, I think, for how I think I’ll be dressing up.”

I stepped out of Crystal’s room, pulled the curtain closed by the balcony door and quickly stripped out of my top and the skirt.  I picked both up and put them with my other clothes.

I experienced a brief moment of displaced emotion, as if my head and body were in Crystal’s apartment, and my heart was somewhere in the past.  In an exposed, open area that wasn’t mine, wasn’t comfortable, where someone could happen to step in and see me exposed at any moment.

The latent feeling of the hospital room.  Of being in the care home.

Pulling the costume on helped.  Deep breaths, the pull of the zipper as it closed at my back and pulled material tight against my chest and stomach.  I fixed the legs, checked for bunching and wrinkles, and deemed it satisfactory.  Not perfect in the way a costume made explicitly for me would be, but satisfactory.

I dug in boxes.  I’d packed my things with shoes and boots at the bottom, clothes on top.

“Belts,” Crystal said.  I heard the clatter as the things were tossed onto the couch.  “Masks.  Armband.”

The bag rustled as it bounced off the couch and landed on the floor.  the armband landed on the couch near the belts.  A black band with the Gold Morning symbol on it.

“Good throws,” I said.  Crystal was standing with her back to me.  She’d tossed them over her shoulder.  “You can turn around.”

“Thank you,” she said.  “Don’t spend too much time.  It’s late, it’s dark, people won’t care too much.”

“I won’t.  Where does the other Earth and the war fit into this?” I asked.  I pulled out a pair of white boots.  Shoes meant for a costume might have worked better, but I tended to prefer boots for the fact that they stayed on better with hard landings, kicks, and rough falls.  Fourteen year old Glory Girl had learned that lesson: it was terminally embarrassing to have a petty criminal watch as you flew over to your lost shoe and put it back on.

“The workers called a stop to all work.  They’re holding the houses, equipment, and building materials hostage, with some suggestion they’ll destroy it all before they give up what they’re owed,” Crystal said.  “The last big convoy of materials and trucks were from another Earth, and they’re part of what’s being held hostage.  The delivery folk from Earth-K aren’t budging because they aren’t abandoning their delivery, even though they’ve been told they can go.  The government from United States of K is getting upset because their people aren’t home, That’s where the murmurings of war are coming from.  Workers aren’t conceding anything else, and construction groups aren’t either.”

“And our job is to make sure the stalemate stays stale and mate until people find a resolution,” I said, pulling on the boots.

“Or mitigate the damage if it gets ugly,” Crystal said.

I did up the straps, reached for the belts, all arranged around a metal ring, and found one I was satisfied with almost right away.  Utility-belt style with small pouches.  I tore open the bag of masks.

The masks were ones that were meant to be stuck to the face.  Remove protective tape, stick to face like cosmetic band-aids.  Not my favorite, but I got why they did it when they sent out sample packs.  The glue would wear out quickly, and the real custom masks for long-term wear would then be ordered.  Quality was fine, though.  All in white, again, some with lenses.

I found one that fit around my eyes and covered my eyebrows, with white lenses, and held it up to make sure the white lenses didn’t obscure vision any.  A faint halo when I looked at sources of illumination, but nothing too bad.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I think you look more like you than I’ve seen you in a long time,” she said.

“Maybe I’m meant to wear a costume,” I said.

“Maybe,” she said.  “But what I meant, cuz, is that from the moment you stepped into my bedroom, well before you put anything on, you looked more focused and grounded in reality than you have in a while.”

I drew in a deep breath, and glanced at the curtains.  Being told I looked better reminded me that I hadn’t looked well before, which reminded me of why I hadn’t looked well, which in turn made me feel less better.

It was easier if I didn’t focus on it.  “Thanks, I guess.”

“Whatever you were doing, I think you should do more of it.”

“I plan to.  But for now, in the interest of time, since your formation is expecting you to hurry back, I just need to know if the mask makes me look like a dork.”

“It’s good,” Crystal said.  She picked up one article of clothing that I’d put aside while digging for my boots.  A plain white sweatshirt.  “To cover up the road rash?”

I looked at my arms.  I still had the raised red marks where I’d tumbled to the road.

“Or maybe not.  It wouldn’t work with your forcefield,” she said.

It would, but I wasn’t about to explain that whole situation.

“No, actually, it could work,” I said.  “Dress up the upper body some.”

She smiled, enthusiastic that I was playing along.  “Exactly!  I was thinking we could stick a quick heat-transfer design on this.”

The sweatshirt as part of my costume?  It would be playing into that trend of working normal clothes into costumes.  Fume Hood’s group had been big on that.  A few of the villains in Lord of Loss’ group had, too, but some of that might have been them trying to fly under the radar before launching their plan.

The most significant trends in fashion and style were often a symptom of external factors.  It was hard to get good costumes with where things were at.  There was a desire, too, to appear more down to earth, to connect to the people, when sentiment was where it was at.

“Sure,” I said.  I smiled.  “That could work.”

“Question is, do you trust me to do it?” she asked, raising one hand and producing a fan of lasers from her fingertips, shooting at a forcefield she’d created.  “Or do you want to wait for the iron to get hot?”

⊙

The battle lines were drawn, so to speak.  At least it was quiet here, the forces gathering in anticipation of the coming day.  At the center of this particular battlefield was a single tall building, lit from bottom floor to top, even in the evening, with the power rationing being what it was.

The masses of construction workers had clustered in groups, the largest mass of them arranged around three sides of the building, kept on the far side of the street by the emergency services and the capes.  Surrounding one of the construction company’s headquarters.

Lights on poles, the lighting of the news crews talking to some key individuals, and the lights the workers were carrying served to illuminate that crowd.

From the bird’s eye view, we could see some of the construction sites around the area, each roughly illuminated by the lights within, that light contained by the fencing that surrounded each building in progress.  Construction vehicles, people, and collections of things cast long shadows with the lights set where they were.  Most had lookouts posted, keeping an eye out for trouble.  A couple of those lookouts turned lights our way as we flew.

Laserdream and I touched ground.

“I’ve missed flying with you,” she said.

I smiled.  My emotions were complicated enough in the moment that I didn’t want to say anything.  I didn’t trust my tone of voice or the words I might choose.

Easier to stick to the shallow, surface response.  It was nice to be around my cousin, nice that she was happy.

We walked down the length of the street, the building on one side, the crowd of workers on the other.  Walking helped to get my blood pumping and my body warmed up, where flying felt like it had frozen my blood and chilled me.  My hands were cold, and I kept them jammed in the pockets of my sweatshirt.

“Laserdream.  You’re cutting it close in getting back in a timely manner.  Who’s this?” a cape in a jacket asked.  He was a heavy guy with a very clean face, a gently curved visor covering his eyes and nose.

“Family,” Laserdream said.  “There was a call for more help, she was invited by someone named, uh…”

“Tempera,” I said.

“Tempera.  Right.  We’re paying for the extra hands on deck?”

“We are,” the man said.  “It’s not a lot.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

He looked skeptical.

“I can second the recommendation if it matters,” Laserdream said.

“It helps,” the guy said.  “If she causes trouble, you know it’s your ass in the fire.”

“Understood, sir,” she said.  “I’ve been doing patrols with her since before I could drive.  I’d trust her with my life.  I’m optimistic my ass will remain room temperature.”

“Don’t get smart.  I don’t want her with the formation.  If she wants in, she needs to apply and train.”

“She doesn’t-” Laserdream said, at the same time I said, “I don’t-”

Laserdream ceded to me.

“No disrespect intended,” I said.  “That isn’t for me.  But I get the gist of the situation, I’ll help keep the peace, I’ll follow any orders.”

“You going to be alright if I send you out to help fill in the gaps at the flanks?”

“It’s why I’m here,” I said.

“South side of the building,” he said, pointing.  “Stand on the dotted line, try not to stare down the crowd or antagonize them.  Be gentle if they get rowdy.”

“Can do,” I said.

“Should be quiet tonight,” he said.  He turned to Laserdream as he said it, but glanced at me.  Including us both in the statement.  “This is one of three locations.  The big demonstrations are supposed to start tomorrow, at another location.  Tonight they’re mainly interested in holding their ground and organizing themselves.  Holding a vigil, giving cameras something to record.  Would be nice if they got over it or got bored before things get started tomorrow, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

That would be why Tempera had said I could call in the morning.  The workers wanted time and media attention to give their side some weight before they really took action.

“Get yourself in position.  I’ll send someone your way with some cups of coffee in a short while.”

“Alright,” I said.

The parahumans along the road to the south of the building were spaced out along the painted divider in the center of the street.  One parahuman every fifteen or so feet.  There were no barricades, only the lights on tripods, connected to battery packs, helping to illuminate most of the road.  The ambient light from nearby buildings contributed.

The crowd was noisy, but it was a low, constant noise.  Talk, conversation, the occasional raised voice.  There wasn’t a car to be seen on the street.

I could remember what had happened to Fume Hood.  I closed my eyes for a moment, and I put my forcefield up, leaving it up.  It made me uncomfortable, but a bullet would be even worse on that score.

The capes down the street to my left were all wearing Advance Guard icons on their sleeves and costumes.  The stylized man bearing the ‘greater-than’ shaped shield, charging forward.  The color of the icon changed, depending on the costume’s color scheme, but it was always such that it stood out, yellow on a red and orange costume, or purple on a blue-green one.  The thick bold lines of the icon’s design tended to flow into the cape’s individual icon or the rest of the costume, the shield’s lines or the diamond-shaped frame of the icon joining the line running down the seam of the sleeve or the lines running across the chest.

“Who are you with?” the guy standing to my left asked.  He had a face plate, with the thick bold lines and angular edges that Advance Guard tended to have, and the ‘ears’ of the plate swept back to cover his ears, giving them a pointed, elfin cast.  His bodysuit was designed to accent his slim frame, a two -piece jacket and legging combo, with a very pronounced zig-zag at the waist where the upper body met the lower body.  There was a slight curl at the toes.

“I’m independent,” I said.  “For now.”

“We’re Advance Guard,” he said.  “I’m Spright.”

“I’m between names,” I said.  “And between costumes.  Don’t judge me too harshly.”

“Can I see the emblem?”

“Just a design, not an emblem,” I said, turning my back to him to show him the rush job we’d managed with the heat-transferred image, my sweatshirt lightly singed in places.  It was a circle with lines intersecting it, almost like a sun, but with the lines running into the circle.  The image was offset, so the lines were shorter to the left and top of the image.  Crystal’s idea and design, and I’d had no objection.

“Between teams, between names, between costumes?”

“More or less sums it up,” I said.  “If you need to call me anything, you can call me Victoria.”

“I’m honored, Victoria,” Spright said, bowing slightly.  “I’m glad for the company.  We might be here for a while.”

“We probably will,” I said.

“I see you’ve got the armband.  You’ve been around for at least a few years. Do you have any war stories you can share?”

“Yes, a good few,” I said.  And a lot I wouldn’t share.

“You’re experienced, huh?”

“A few years under my belt.  A few years of semi-retirement.”

“I can tell you I’m very experienced,” he said, with a bit of humor in his voice.

I looked at him, one eyebrow arched.

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” he said.

“Is that how we’re doing this?”

“Could be,” he said.  “What I’m offering is long and thoroughly satisfying.  Are you game?”

“Wow,” I said.  I smiled despite myself, looking over the crowd instead of at Spright.  “When they said Advance Guard rushes into things, they weren’t lying.”

“Once you get me going, I go all night.  I might as well get started early.”

“With an audience, though?”

“I’ve got nothing to hide.  I’d say they could join in, but I think that would get a little hectic.”

“It might just,” I said.  “Would be nice to steer clear of hectic for a while.”

“I very much agree, Victoria Between-things,” Spright said.  “You have to find a good fit, strike the right rhythm, the right pace.  Once you’re comfortable, you might be able to vary it up some.”

The woman standing to the left of Spright said something that sounded an awful lot like, “Oh my god, Spright.”

I checked, but it didn’t look like the people on the sidewalk heard us.  The buzz of conversation seemed to drown out our voices.

“Is he always like this?” I asked, raising my voice a bit.

“Yes,” Spright said.

“No,” she said.  “I dare say you’ve inspired him.  Unfortunately.”

Spright sounded almost energized by his teammate’s exasperation.  “I’m intrigued more than inspired.  I’d love to indulge in your, ahem, stories, Victoria with the stylish icon.”

“It’s not that great an icon,” I said.  “Nice try, though.  I appreciate it.”

“I wanted to work in the flattery somehow.  There’s no shortage of things I could say, by the way, and I’m not messing around when I say that.  I chose the icon because I do like it, and because when you say something nice about something like a girl’s hair or something else about their appearance, you tend to get that kneejerk resistance.”

“You do,” I said.  For me, it’s for reasons other than the usual.  It was a shame, but his moment of frankness had brought things home again.  My tone of voice was audibly different even to myself as I said, “I’m flattered, Spright, really.”

“Aw darn.  But?”

“But while I’d be happy to share a few stories, I’m not up for the other stuff you’re driving for.  It’s just not where I’m at.  Wouldn’t be fair to you.  I’ve gotta figure myself out some, first.”

“I can respect that,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said.  “I appreciate the wit.  You were pretty snappy with some of that.”

“Thanks for letting me try, I-” Spright stopped as the woman standing to his left made a sound effect with her mouth.  I didn’t hear the preceding sound, but I heard her make a sound like a small crash with her mouth.  Spright switched tacks to say, “I’ll throw things at you, Tandem.”

The woman laughed.

A moment later, another person joined us.  A ripple in the road, and he appeared almost instantly out of the gloom.  The cape I’d met early in the day the community center had been attacked, with the blades jutting from his costume.

He looked at me, sizing me up.

“Hi,” I said.

“Mmh,” he made a sound, not really a response.  “Hey, Spright, swap places with me for a bit.”

The ‘mmh’ bugged me.  “I’m enjoying his company.”

“She’s enjoying my company, Shortcut,” Spright said.  “It’s a good night.”

“It’s going to be a long night,” Shortcut said.  “I think I know her from the other day.”

He paused, glancing back at me.

“Yeah,” I said.

Shortcut turned back to talk to Spright, then paused, glancing back at me.  “What’s that sound?”

I listened, and I heard it.  Scratching.

Without trying to look too much like I was looking down, I looked down.  My forcefield, invisible to everyone present, was scratching at the road.

I took flight, lifting myself up enough that the arms couldn’t reach the ground.  About eight feet up.  From the angle, as I saw the light hit the road at a different angle, I could see the shallow gouges.

The good humor from earlier was spoiled a little at that.

“Everything okay?” Spright asked.

“Yeah, just restless, bit of power quirkery,” I said.  I realized the crowd had noticed me take flight, and the conversation had quieted a bit.

It was mildly surprising that, Spright’s flirting aside, nobody in a large collection of construction employees had called out to me.

I tested my luck, and used the opportunity to call out, “You guys doing okay!?”

“Bit cool out!” someone called back.

“Yeah!” I called back.  “Better than the alternative, isn’t it?”

That got me a fairly mixed response.

“Shoulder to shoulder in the heat, stinking of sweat?  You don’t want that!”

“We’re used to the smell of sweat, hon!” a woman called out.  There were murmurs of agreement.

“Take care of yourselves, okay?”

There were a few murmured and unintelligible responses, but a more emotional cry of, “Give us our homes and we’ll be just fucking fine!” stood out.  Some heads turned in that direction.

“It’s not up to us,” I said.  “Save that energy for tomorrow, alright?  We’re here to keep you safe and keep them safe.”

There were a few mumbled replies.

“Doesn’t help,” Shortcut said.

“I dunno,” I said.  “Letting them know we’re not against them, we care about their well being?  Reaching out and talking can’t hurt, can it?”

“I guess that’s why I’m here,” Shortcut said.

I looked his way.

“Reaching out and talking,” he said.  “I just wanted to make sure there’s no hard feelings.”

“About you not getting into Advance Guard.”

I’d emailed, they’d sent a reply a couple of hours later saying no.

“I didn’t devote a lot of thought to it,” I said.  “Sucks, but you guys have to do what you have to do.  And so does everyone else, apparently.  I’ll figure something out.”

“They didn’t tell you it was me?”

“No,” I said.  I frowned.

“I told them to tell you no and to tell you it was me, and why.”

“Alright,” I said.  “They just told me no.”

“Well fuck that.  I thought you needed to know, what you did back there, it was shitty.”

“Beg pardon?”

“I realized after your face came up on some of the events about the Norfair community center incident.  You went up against Lord of Loss?”

“I don’t see what the issue is,” I said.

“You happen to beat me to the scene, and then you use your secret identity, condescension and anti-parahuman shit to take me down a notch?  And then you want a place on Advance Guard?”

“I happened to be there.  I’m sorry, it was not my intention to come across that way.”  I tried to help you out some.

“Yeah,” he said.  “Right.  I can guess what your intentions were.”

I was pretty darn confident my handling of the situation had been alright.  I was inclined to chalk this one up to the guy having a screw loose or a few bundled up issues.  It still bothered me, and it bothered me more that a nice conversation had been interrupted, and now this guy was apparently intent on keeping me company for the night, telling me how I was responsible for his problems and issues.

I pursed my lips, doing my best to filter what he was saying, tuning out what I could and responding where necessary, so he wouldn’t add me ignoring him to his list of grievances.  He was talking about the community center now.

Voices were raised, a few shouts, both from capes at one of the other streets, and by people in the crowd.  Phones were out.

It was almost a welcome interruption, in that solitary moment between the initial commotion and when I realized that it meant people were hurt.

I rotated myself in the air, looking, trying to figure out what had happened.  I saw Crystal coming, and flew to meet her.

“Come!” she shouted, barely pausing as she flew.  I joined her, wavering as air ripped past my forcefield, lopsided in a way I couldn’t quite detect, moving.

I disabled the forcefield, and in the doing, I could fly straighter, but I flew against cold wind, unprotected.

Crystal didn’t explain.  It was left for me to see.

Our site had been quiet.  At least one of the other places workers were congregating wasn’t.  People were more spread out, and I suspected from their arrangement that some had crossed the street, approaching the building.  There were more emergency vehicles, more capes, and there was a large clearing in the center of the crowd.

Eight people were gathered toward the center of that clearing, with more scattered across the more open area.  Among them, several had eyes that glowed, or glows emanating from their mouths.  Shapes I couldn’t quite make out moved around them.  A power at work, like the outline of something that glowed slightly in the dark, too abstract to make out.

I watched as two people broke from the edge of the clearing and ran toward the center group.  A man and a woman, holding hands.

It hit me like a blow to the head.  An image in my mind’s eye, a feeling, a sense of something greater.  Forgotten in the same instant it occurred.  I dropped out of the air, and I caught myself a moment later.  Crystal did much the same.

“Get back!” someone hollered.

A megaphone blared, “Get away from the center!”

The eight people were sixteen now, including the two that had run toward the center and some of the people that hadn’t retreated to the clearing’s edge.  Eyes glowed, powers wreathed a few hands.  A spike of power-generated material was stabbing skyward in front of a woman.  A man had fallen to his knees, arms spread, and the ground was rippling around them.

People didn’t get away from the center.  Realizing what was happening, or thinking they knew what was happening, others dashed toward the group, joining it.

“Get back,” Crystal said.  “If we get knocked out-”

I retreated, looking for where the defending capes were.  Lit by flashing, noiseless sirens, the capes were clustered not far from the building.  They were getting organized.

“It’s a broken trigger,” I said.

“Is it?” Crystal asked.

I flew straight for the heroes on scene.  I didn’t get the chance to hear two words out of the leader’s mouth before we were hit again.  Every one of us winced and reacted as it hit us.  Too brief to be a trigger vision, incomplete, fractured, it still made itself felt.

The sixteen had become thirty-two.

“Evacuate!”

One word from the parahuman in charge was all we needed.  The clock was too short for anything more.

Capes fanned out, most of them on foot.  I could leave the parts of the crowd closest to us to them.  I flew, avoiding the sky directly over the group of affected people, circling around the periphery instead.  The wind was cold against my face and legs.

The massed crowd of citizen workers was to my right, the people with powers to my left.  Half of the light sources in and around the clearing had broken, and the only other illumination came from the effects of powers.  A common thread ran through all of it.  Energy spilled out and created matter where it splattered on the road, materials sprouted from nothing, streaked with thin streams of liquid that glowed like fire, and more abstract growths formed suspended in air, their images sticking to the backs of my eyes like the persistent afterimages of sparklers waved in the dark.

People were shouting.  Some were screaming.  I couldn’t make much of it out.

I flew to the far side of the clearing, which also happened to have some of the thickest gatherings of people.  They had been citizen laborers, gathering to make their displeasure known to the construction groups.  They’d been facing the building until the incident, they’d backed up, and there were places where the presence of buildings and parked vehicles made it so they had no place to retreat, leaving them now packed together, shoulder to shoulder, front to back, jostling.

I’d helped to evacuate before.  I had attended the Leviathan attack on my hometown.  I had been around for the majority of the Slaughterhouse Nine crisis.  I’d participated in other, minor incidents, helping with fires and storms, though those had mostly involved helping the elderly and standing around.

The truism was that in a disaster, people were their own worst enemies.

Never this bad.

I’d never seen or imagined a situation where people would do the opposite of evacuating, throwing themselves headlong into the hazard.  They thought the people in the center of the clearing were getting powers, and people were breaking away from the crowd at the clearing’s edge to run toward the affected individuals.

Crystal created a wall to block off a street as she passed it.  She wouldn’t be able to keep it up as she got further away, but it bought time for others to get there.

She raked a laser across the road, a bright and noticeable  distraction, to give people pause.

I dropped to the street, using a pulse of my aura to get people’s attention.  Some stopped to look, while others ducked low, as if instinct drove them to shy away from the perceived threat.

“Run!” I shouted, using my aura to play up my words.  “Other way!”

I saw eyes widen, and turned to look.  A man had opened his mouth, and had something that looked almost as tall and thick as a telephone pole spearing skyward from his mouth.  Blood streamed from the sides of his mouth, his jaw clearly dislocated, and more fluids painted the length of the pole as it continued to rise.  It reached its maximum height, and then forked, the upper half splitting out into two equally thick portions, a giant ‘Y’ shape.  Each branch then forked into two, and forked into two again.

“Go,” I said, sparing only a momentary glance for the people I’d been stopping.  I saw them start to run away.

The man reached up, his fingers dragging along the blood-slick shaft of the trunk of the fractal tree he had vomited up.  Each movement of his hands was slower and weaker than the last.

I flew toward him, to do what I could to help, even though I wasn’t sure what that could possibly be.

The ‘tree’ toppled, and it was only because I was already on my way toward him that I was able to intervene.  I reached out for the falling tree, and my power was quicker to touch it.  Phantom fingers bit into the surface, fracturing the chalky material.  With flight, my bare hands, my power, and my aura pushed out to give people a little more incentive to get out of the way, I controlled the tree’s fall.  It broke into chunks on contact with the ground.  One of the people with new powers was pinned beneath branches, but it didn’t look like he was hurt by the contact.

I flew to the man who’d grown the tree.  Even before I reached his side, I could see the damage that had been done.  Jaw, throat, chest, and stomach had been torn away.  Traces of the same material that had formed the tree had collected in his insides and pelvis, breaking into jagged pieces at some point before or during the tree’s fall.

He had no throat to feel for a pulse.  I wasn’t about to rule anything out, even as I saw the remains of his heart in his splayed-out chest cavity.  I pried one of his eyes open, and I saw no response.

I went from a crouch to airborne in a second.

That particular disaster had been dramatic and visible for a significant portion of the people nearby.  Most were thinking twice about running toward the epicenter.

When was the next wave coming?  The number of people to trigger all at once had seemed to double the last time.  They didn’t look like multi-triggers either.  One power each, some self-destructive.  I could hear the screams and shouts of a lot of unhappy people and I couldn’t see one person who looked particularly happy about their new ability.

I flew to a new location, looking to see where I could get the most people away.  The tree had done my work for me in one spot, Laserdream was standing at the intersection of two streets and walling them off with red-tinted, translucent fields.

I saw another group- people were pulling away from the crowd, which was actively trying to grab them and hold them back.  Young people – older teenagers and twenty-somethings, that might have been a group of friends.  Seven of them.

I shouted, but my voice was drowned out by the dentist-drill scream of a power somewhere nearby, by the hollers, the warnings, a dull explosion.

I used my aura again.  Several people in the group stumbled, so caught up in reacting to my aura that they lost track of where they were going or how to put one foot in front of the other.  Several others paused, helping their friends that had tripped, stopped, or fallen.  The people at the edge of the crowd reacted too, pulling back away from me.

I’d hoped more of them would stop shouting and screaming.  The affected people and the people at the edge of the clearing were making so much noise that it nearly drowned me out as I shouted, “Get back!”

A number of people listened.  The crowd in particular was inclined to take my order, getting away from the scene.  Two of the seven who’d lagged behind the others turned to go too.

Five, however, looked at me and then continued to run toward the scene.

I clenched my fist.

Rationally, I knew that they likely saw this as the simplest thing in the world.  The people over there had powers; all they had to do to get powers was to head over there.  Some might well have no idea what triggers were, or they might have bought into one of the various other theories out there, some intentionally obscuring the truth.  They didn’t know better.

Well, the screaming should have given them pause, but that might have been balanced out by the fact that they felt especially powerless at this time in particular.  Because we were only two years after the most catastrophic and traumatic loss of human life in history.  Because as much as we were recovering, we were far from being where we’d been.  We weren’t okay.  The dispute between the citizen workers and the construction administrations only brought that home.

Rationally, I knew that.

Less rationally, I had a weak point that extended well before the Gold Morning, well before the hospital stay, well before the Slaughterhouse Nine, before the bad days against Empire Eighty-Eight, before my trigger, even.  I’d spent a fair portion of my time post-trigger and especially in the hospital, thinking about it.

I couldn’t fucking stand being ignored.

I flew to intercept.

I hadn’t practiced with this power enough.  Even using it was a hard reminder, with a mental and emotional cost.  I knew I needed to come to terms with it, and my time at the hospital had been an early foray into that.

That had been flight, and my flight was more or less untouched.

I flew low, approaching a car.  As with the tree, all of my powers were up and active as I reached out in the car’s direction.  Phantom hands dug into the metal of the car’s body, invisible fingers stabbing through.  A mass of something pressed down on the hood, caving it in.

If I had any control over those limbs, it wasn’t something that lent itself to fine touches.  It didn’t work well with the careful, methodical, warrior monk approach.  In this, in the instinct and the moment of frustration, I could only hope that what I wanted and what my power wanted were mostly in agreement.

I glanced up to make sure Laserdream wasn’t watching.  I was close enough for my fingertips to brush the car’s paint as I swept my arm to one side, the holes and dents in the car twisting or opening wider as the phantom grip adjusted.  The- the other Victoria, the phantom Victoria that had never left the hospital, the wretch, threw the car.

I canceled my power momentarily, to force it to release its hold, so it wouldn’t fling the car into the people I was trying to stop.  I let it reactivate a half-second later, flying forward in the car’s direction.  My defenses were up and sufficient to let me adjust the car’s trajectory with a sharp kick to the side.  Just to be safe.

It crashed into a parked car, upside down, its roof and windows shearing into the top of the other.  A loud impact, metal scraping metal, a dozen windows on the two vehicles breaking.  It was raucous, chaotic, sudden and surprising, in a stark contrast to the massive, enduring weight that seemed to settle in me.

Harder than flying.  I could tell myself I was helping people, keeping them clear of danger, and it helped much as it had with the flying, but it was still hard.

The fact that a car had flown into another car twenty feet in front of them was enough to stop them in their tracks.  I had their full attention now.

“Get away!  It’s dangerous!”

Some backed away, then ran.  Two backed off but didn’t run.  The last of them was a man about my age, who stepped closer to the cars, intent on climbing over them.

“Get away!”

I was prepared to grab him as he climbed onto the underside of the car I’d thrown.  He continued to ignore me, finding his balance, stepping forward-

The fragment of a trigger vision hit me.  The latest wave.

I saw only a flash of faces, and in seeing those faces, I saw the phantom self that clung to me.  The impression lingered for only a moment before I realized the faces didn’t resemble mine.

The man had been springing forward from the car to the ground when the event had hit.  I saw his legs swing forward, while his head remained in place.  He dangled, suspended in the air.

I picked myself up off the ground, flying to him.

Gone already.  No pulse, no light behind the eyes.  He made a faint gurgling sound, but it was some biological process or symptom of what had happened, not a sign of life.  He was pissing himself and shitting himself in death.

He dropped out of the air, and I caught him.  It hardly mattered, he was gone, but it didn’t feel right to just let him fall.  I eased him to the ground.

“Please help!” I heard a guy shout, amid renewed and nearby whimpers and sobs.

I flew.  The two who had drawn back but hadn’t run- a boy and a girl.  The boy was holding the girl, while she strove to stay on her tiptoes.  Her face was turned skyward.

I flew to them, and I caught her, helping to hold her.

“Hold her steady!” the guy shouted.

I held her as steady as I could.

Another suspension?

“My neck!” the victim shrieked the words.  A single glowing vein stood out on each arm, and glows on her legs suggested more of the same, but she barely seemed to care about it.  Clear fluid was streaming from her nose, thinner than snot, with needle-thin streams of blood joining it.

“We got you,” I said.  “We’re here, we’ll support you.  Stay calm.”

“I can’t move my head!” she cried out.  “Every time- my neck!”

“Don’t try,” I said.  The guy was looking to me for help, and I wasn’t sure what to say or do.

“My head hurts,” she said, sounding very far away.  Her words dissolved into a stream of whimpers and cries of ‘ow’.

I was supporting her weight, but it wasn’t easy to do it from a strength perspective with my feet on the ground, and it wasn’t easy to stay steady while flying.

“Laserdream!” I shouted the words, top of my lungs.

“Headache,” the victim said, her eyes wide.  “My brain.”

The guy looked at me again.  This time I didn’t try to hide my expression.  I knew I looked grim.

Her brain.  The Corona Pollentia, the means by which powers were operated by the parahuman.  Hers had been established, but not as a fluid, functional thing.  It was a nail, taking her brain and fixing it to a specific position in reality.

Laserdream appeared beside me.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Give her something to stand on,” I said.  “She’s stuck.”

The forcefield appeared below.  The girl no longer had to stand on her tiptoes.

“People are evacuating more now,” Laserdream said.  “We need to handle the people toward the center.  The waves are random.”

I turned, looking at the guy.  “Do you know her?”

“Not really.”

“Can you run?  Go tell people to get away, as fast as they can.  This is bad.”

“You don’t want to get caught in it,” Laserdream said.

The guy nodded.

“Bye Anne,” he said.  He let go of the girl, transitioning the grip entirely to me, then turned to run.

Anne.

She was making small sounds, guttural.  One hand came up to touch the side of my face and my hair, clumsy, as if she didn’t have full use of her fingers.

One pat.

“I’m sorry Anne,” I said.

She made another of the gurgling sounds.  She was vomiting, I realized, and with her face fixed in a skyward position, there wasn’t anything I could do.  Anything I did to move her would add to the damage to her brain.

I hugged her, hard.  After a moment, I felt her hug me back, clumsy but fierce.

It was only a moment later that she started to convulse, whole-body.  I moved to try to seize her head and keep it from moving- a second too late.  One wrenching, forced movement of her head and upper body, and the nail ripped through a good share of the material in its vicinity.

I caught her as she fell, and laid her out on the ground, placing her on her side.

“We need to help others, Victoria.”

“Yeah.”

Spooky, to take to the air again.  I’d seen the numbers of people affected double, roughly, and this was another doubling, to look at it.  More artificial sources of light had broken, as space folded in areas, as things grew to obscure them, or as tendrils of energy lashed out like living things, distorting geography with each impact.

Matter creation, matter manipulation, matter distortion.

Over fifty people, if I had to guess.  It could well have been sixty-four.  They were too spread out for me to effectively ballpark.  Many might well have died from their power expression or the ‘nailing down’ of the brain.

There was no being polite, now.  One person hesitating at what could have been the edge of the affected area.  I didn’t even pause as I grabbed him by the wrist, picking him up off the ground, dragging him with me, me barely six feet above the ground, him with toes and shoes scraping the road’s surface.  I didn’t want the fall to be too rough if I was knocked out of the air again.

I half-deposited, half-threw him toward the crowd that still lingered.  I pointed at the largest guy present.  “You.  Make sure these people get away!  Keep an eye on this one!”

He looked spooked, and I wasn’t even using my aura.  He gave me a singular nod.

Another two, two men together.  One of them fought me as I held him, trying to pry my hand free.

“Assholes!” he screamed, twisting my fingers, trying to get leverage to bend one backward.  “Keeping powers to yourselves!”

I didn’t reply.  I tightened my grip to keep him from getting any one of my fingers, and I saved my breath and my focus.

If this was turning out as badly as it looked like it was, the aftermath would be answer enough.

The guy who’d fought me was deposited beside the first vehicle with flashing lights that was waiting at the edges.  A fire truck.

“Don’t let him go back!  And try to get further away, in case it expands!”

I was already leaving before they could answer me.  I heard the shouts, though.  The answers.

Crystal wasn’t using lasers or forcefields much anymore.  Only flight, only manhandling.

I delivered two more armfuls of cargo, getting people clear of the danger.  On my return trip, I saw the geography transforming.  A culmination of everything up to this point.  From matter generation, matter distortion, and matter transformation to… something that made the entire area look as though it was being smudged and smeared around, streets widening, buildings pulling back from the street.

Except- no.  No, this was a familiar smudging and smearing.  One that worked with us.

You made it, little V, I thought.  I felt emotionally numb from the series of events, the deaths I’d seen, my momentary use of my power and how the feelings I’d tapped in that moment weren’t easy to bring back into order.

There was only what needed to be done, the mission that stood front and center.  It was difficult to execute effectively, but simple in how Glory Girl, Victoria, the phantom wretch and the capes I was working with could all agree it should be done.

Get people clear.  Get them safe.

A woman screamed words that barely strung together, the heel of one hand pressed to her forehead.  The other was pointed forward.  She shot something that was only visible by the way light refracted at its edges.  The projectile hit the ground, carrying forward like a cartoon mole and the elongated, humped trail of dirt it left in its wake.  Unlike the mole, the hump was jagged, folded earth.  Road folded up like complex origami.  She was pinning people down, keeping them from exiting a building.

In the words I could make out, she wanted them to come help her, and in her actions she drove them away.

“Stop!” I shouted to her.

She shot one projectile at me.  Barely visible, it cut through the air, wind shrieking.

I didn’t want to kill her, and if her hand at her head was any clue that she was in similar straits to Anne and the other man, a light push could do horrendous damage.

I drew closer to the ground, defenses up.

Work with me, I told my power.  My agent.  My flight wobbled as I experienced the lopsided drag of a hand reaching down at one side, clawing at the ground as I passed it.

It didn’t create nearly enough debris.

I changed angles.  I flew for the hump of origami road, two feet across, two feet tall, jagged and menacing.

I passed within a few feet of it, and let my forcefield hit it.

The hump of ground shattered explosively, blades of road cutting at my legs.  But it did create a cloud of dust and debris.

She shot at me, and I reversed direction, passing the hump again, striking it.

The two passes created enough of a mess to block the view.  I flew to the people the origami road woman had pinned down.  “Go, go, go!”

I stood by with my defenses up, positioned to intercept any incoming projectiles.  They took the chance to run for it.

This whole thing was a clusterfuck.  How many people were caught?  How many were acting irrational?  What options did we have?  What the hell was I supposed to do?

The origami woman didn’t send any attacks through the cloud of shattered road that I’d created.  The moment the group was out of sight and away, I was moving again.

A complete and total clusterfuck.  I flew high, and I looked down, wishing we had more light on the scene.

I could see where the distortions were being utilized.  The space between the people at the edges and the center of the effect was being extended, making the clearing larger.  It made it harder for people to approach, carried fleeing people away.  It meant the effect had to reach further if it wanted to catch anyone.

In the tension and the emotions that gripped me, I felt an isolated point of peace and calm I could grab onto.

Vista was here, Vista had made it through Gold Morning.  She was one of the people I liked.  A reason I was doing what I did.  She was one of the good ones, she was doing good work here, and I wanted to help her on multiple levels.

In that line of thinking, I found both the focus to think beyond mere instinct, and to realize what I could do.  I knew how Vista worked.

“It’s Vista,” Laserdream said.  She’d appeared beside me again.  She had a flying cape with her.

“Come on,” I said.  I flew for where the expansion of space seemed weakest, even pinched.

They weren’t on the streets.  It was people in buildings.

I tore through a door, flew through a house.  Nothing.  I bumped into Laserdream and her PRTCJ friend on the way out.  “Search the buildings.  Vista’s power is weakest when it has people in its area.  There are people near here.”

We spread out.  One building each, searching neighboring houses.  I was midway through my search when I heard a whistle.

I flew to the sound.  Vagrants, or just refugees from Gimel who had decided they’d be more comfortable squatting in unoccupied, recently built houses than they were in the tent cities.

The three of us carried them clear.  We were delivering them to safety when the next pulse hit.  We weren’t hit, but I could see a glowing figure in the sky flicker and drop briefly before they caught themselves.

We took to the sky again, looking for pinched areas where things hadn’t distorted enough.  There were two spots, and both were already being addressed.

The area was clear.  We found our way to where the Warden-affiliated capes had collected.  They had gathered at the edge of the effect.

“I think we’re clear, Rocketround, sir,” Laserdream reported.

“We should be shortly,” the leader said, glancing at a Foresight cape who stood nearby.

“Yes sir,” the cape said.  A girl with a hood and blindfold.

“How many?” Rocketround asked.

“Ninety two, if you include the ones in houses,” she said.

Rocketround paused, staring down the length of the road toward the center of the vastly extended clearing.  He spat.  When he spoke, he managed a tone that pretty perfectly encapsulated what I and probably most of us were feeling, “Fuck me.”

Ninety two.  Ninety two, many like Anne.  Many wanting help.  I wanted to fly in, to do something.

“I want everyone clear of the area.  We wait, we see what happens,” he said.  “We see if it expands in reach with further pulses, but I don’t want to give it anything.  Not even any bounceback from reaching out and finding some of us.  Let me know when the next pulse happens.”

“Yes sir,” the blindfolded girl said.

Something in the distance crashed to ground.  Another fixture like the fractal tree?

Laserdream approached me, and she put an arm around me.  I did the same for her.

There was small talk, people remarking on what they’d seen.  Horrible things.  People buried alive by their own powers.  A few cases like what I’d observed.

“Is Vista around?” I asked.  “That was her, right?”

I hadn’t expected Rocketround to be the one to answer, but he was the one who spoke up, saying, “She is.  Upstairs, top floor.  She said she needed a view and no interruptions.”

No interruptions.  I was disappointed.

“Who’s she with?” I asked.

“Wardens,” he said.

“Good for her,” I said.

“Who are you and who are you with?” he asked.

“Victoria Dallon.  Nobody, yet.  I’ve been interviewing for teams.”

“She did pretty good work,” blindfold girl said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“When you three got the homeless out of the house, Vista said something under her breath.  I think it was ‘thank you’.  They were getting in her way somehow.”

I nodded.  “I’m from her town.  I was briefly her teammate.”

It was so mundane it was chilling and disconcerting, after the chaos we’d just weathered.  A few moments of horrible, of stupidity and damage and madness, and now we waited to see what happened next, waiting to see what the aftermath would be.  We talked about dumb things.

“What do you think?” Rocketround asked.  “Not just asking you, Victoria.  Anyone.”

It was in that question that I saw the first real hint that he was shaken.  He was doubting his own capacity in this.

“This is going to hurt,” another cape said.  “People were already feeling pretty beaten down, and… ninety people?  We lost ninety?”

“We don’t know if all of them are in trouble,” Laserdream said.

“I think they might be,” blindfold girl said.

Laserdream didn’t have a response for that.  She only hugged me tighter with the one arm.

“I think-” I started.  “Just speculation.”

“Any clues or guesses about what’s going on would be good,” Rocketround said.  He was gripping his upper arm as he stood with arms folded.  He’d emphasized ‘any’, which only served to emphasize how little a clue he and we had.

“The broken triggers are pretty out there.  Not a lot of consistent points or facts… except that they’re big,” I said.

“Big?” a nearby cape asked.

“They tend to cover a lot of ground.  Shaker stuff.”

“Yeah,” Rocketround said.  “That’s come up in briefings.”

“Location, environment, and position matters a lot,” I said.  “The capes closest to the perimeter were least mobile.  I think the further they got from the center, the less flex there was.  Until their agents wouldn’t let them move at all.”

“Typhlosis pointed that out,” Rocketround said, indicating the girl with the blindfold.

“We might want to make them stay put,” I said.

“Yeah,” Rocketround said.  “We’ll do that.”

Someone else spoke up.  A remark about common thread through the powers they’d seen.  Others chimed in.

I only half-listened.  A lot of images stayed with me.  The faces I’d seen midway through the one fragmented trigger, the indents in the car as the phantom limbs had reached out for it, Anne.  The lingering sensation of Anne clinging to me, hard, the touch on my face.  I didn’t know what she had wanted to communicate.  A last kind gesture?

“There we go,” the blindfolded girl said.  “Pulse.  Nobody else affected.”

“I’m going to approach,” Rocketround said.  “Roadblock?  I’d appreciate it if you came.”

“Of course,” a cape by the side said.  A guy in heavy armor.

“Protect me if we run into any trouble.”

“Only four left,” Typhlosis said.

“Four?” Rocketround sounded surprised.

Laserdream’s head snapped around.  Looking at me, looking at Typhlosis.

Typhlosis continued, “Only four alive, still.  The rest went down.  Eaten by their powers, or they tried to move when they couldn’t, and their brains caved in.”

I squeezed Laserdream’s hand.

I might have been less surprised than her because I’d read up more on how these things tended to go.

“Let’s go,” Rocketround said.  “Anyone comfortable joining me, come.”

They speed-marched toward the center of the effect.  One hand on another cape’s arm for support and guidance, Typhlosis directed us toward the nearest surviving cape.

“Three,” she said, as we got close enough to see him.

He was a man, mid-twenties.  His legs and stomach were buried in a writhing mass of something very similar to the origami road I’d seen earlier, materials made thin, folded many times over, until they didn’t quite seem to be three dimensions anymore.  Some of those materials were the pieces of the twenty or so people in his immediate vicinity.

A lone figure, standing on a hill of the fallen citizen workers, caught up in the broken trigger’s effect.

“Don’t move!” Rocketround shouted.  “Alright!?”

“Not moving,” was the response, quiet.

“No using powers.  Stay put, stay calm.  We’re going to find out a way to help you.”

“I don’t think I can be helped,” the man said.  His head was bowed, and he couldn’t seem to move it.  His hair was long, tied back into a low ponytail, and it covered much of his face.

“We can figure something out,” Rocketround said.

“Two,” Typhlosis said, quiet.

Two parahumans left.

The effect had caught over ninety over what couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes.  Now there were two.

“I’m worried,” the man in the clearing’s center said.  “I can feel all the others.”

He moved his hand.

Every body in the vicinity moved.  A matching movement of hands, limp arms rolling off of sides or fingers digging into powdered sidewalk.

“Don’t move!” Rocketround called out.

“I’m on a brink, and I can’t see it, but I can feel it,” the man said.

“Try not to think about it,” Rocketround said.  “Okay?”

“I can feel it,” the man said.  He wasn’t paying much attention to Rocketround.  “All the way down to this vast well, partially filled with potential energy.  Like I’m on the lip of a volcano and it’s an impossibly long fall with only magma at the bottom.  I don’t know if I’m better off throwing myself down into that or leaving it alone.”

“Leave it alone,” I said, my voice joining more than one other person’s.

“What if my thoughts and brain get made into a part of that?  One piece in that thing’s construction.  What if it makes me immortal, forever a part of this thing?  A recording of me in there, how I think, how I do things.”

“We’ve studied parahumans, powers and power sources a lot,” Roadblock said.  “We’re pretty sure that’s not a thing.”

“Yeah,” the guy in the clearing’s center said.  “But…”

He trailed off.

“It’s not a thing,” Rocketround’s voice joined Roadblock’s.

“But I’m standing closer to it than you are,” the man said.  “And from where I stand, I feel like it might be.”

Nobody had a ready response to that.

“One,” Typhlosis murmured.

“I’m the last one standing on the brink now,” the man said.  “I don’t think I can do this much longer.  Do I embrace it or turn away?  I wish I could see you, to-”

He reached up, to move his hair out of his eyes.

“Don’t!” I called out.  My voice wasn’t the only voice of protest, but it might have been the first.  Perhaps because I was most mindful of arms that weren’t mine, in my immediate vicinity.

The arms of people all around him operated as extensions of him.  A matching, reaching movement, up and out.  Some disintegrated as they moved, but one lying next to him reached up, out, and into the finely spun construction of road that cocooned the man’s legs.

As I’d done to the altered road, the reaching arm broke the construction like it was sugar crystal or a snow globe.  There was a spray of blood, and the man dropped, jerking as his Corona Pollentia remained in place, briefly suspending him.  He was dead in that instant, well before he sprawled to the ground, shattered from the waist down.

My hand held Laserdream’s tight.

I was thankful that Typhlosis didn’t give us an updated count.

⊙

Crystal had backed me up for a good while.  She’d been a friend, a support.

She had performed during the event.  She’d been focused, she’d done what she needed to do.  It had been after that she faltered.  Hearing that the people who’d been touched by the broken trigger weren’t doing well, then hearing that only four remained.  Hearing and seeing those four drop away.

It had been that way for Leviathan, too.

It had probably been that way after I went to the hospital.

Fine during, not so fine after.

It had been ten days, now.  Ten days after the broken trigger with the citizen workers.  One of the worst we’d seen for citizen casualties and damage.

I landed on the balcony, letting myself in.  I took the carton out of the plastic bag and popped it into the microwave, lid ajar.  Eighteen seconds.

“Vic?” Crystal called out.

“I’m here.  One second.”

“That had better not be what I think it is.”

“It is.”

Crystal groaned audibly.

I pulled the carton free, grabbed some spoons, and walked over to the living room.  Crystal was sitting in the armchair, watching TV, a blanket on her lap.

She glared at me, but it was a mock glare, and it softened considerably as she saw the carton.

“Slightly melted brownie caramel ice cream,” I said.  I collapsed onto the couch, reaching high overhead to hold the carton and a spoon out to her.  “I’ll share it with you.”

“Well, if you’re sharing it…”

“I’ll exercise with you too, to work it off.  For now, though, it’s comfort food, staying cozy, and keeping each other company.”

“Okay.  You’re mostly forgiven.”

“And a stupid-in-a-good-way movie to watch,” I said, pulling the movie case out of the pocket I’d wedged it into.  “Because it turns out TV sucks after the world ends, and I can’t watch you subject yourself to it.”

“Okay,” she said.  “You’re forgiven.”

I popped the movie in, then settled on the couch, pulling a blanket over my legs, arranging a cushion to sit up against.  I fetched my phone and checked my messages.  A second cancellation from Jessica.

After a disaster like that, too many people needed looking after.

I twisted my head around to look at Crystal, as she ate a spoonful of icecream from the carton.  She passed it to me and I took a bite for myself, from the side she hadn’t dug into.  I passed it back, watching as the movie started.

My turn to look after Crystal.

⊙

The lights were off in the coffee shop, though it wasn’t dark with the light coming in through the windows.  The majority of the customers were sitting on the outside patio, and the interior was quiet, empty, and cool.

It was eerie, to go from the disaster to the more or less quiet period after.  To be back on this street, where the car had hit the pillar, and where I’d seen so much grief from one person, and to try and reconcile that with the broken trigger, the ninety dead, the fact that so many were dealing by ignoring it.  Moving on a matter of two weeks after the fact.

“Victoria?” the barista asked me.

My first thought was that she’d recognized me.  “Yes?”

“Your friend stepped into the back.  She said she’d be right out, but she asked us to keep an eye out for you so you didn’t think she was late.”

“Got it.  Thank you.”

“Can I get you anything?”

I looked outside.  Sunny, warm.  The summer and its heat lingered in the daytime.  “I can’t bring myself to drink anything hot when the weather’s like this.  Do you have any suggestions?”

“Ice coffee?  Iced tea?  Pop?”

“Iced tea, please,” I said, noting the use of ‘pop’.  A lot of people from a lot of regions had gathered in the megalopolis.

I didn’t have to sit down and wait for her to bring it to me.  It was in my hands within a matter of seconds, and I took it to the seat furthest from the door, where Jessica and I would have some privacy.

She was out of the washroom before I’d fully settled in.  Her blouse had buttons at the front and a collar, but was sleeveless, tucked into shorts.  I wondered if she looked less at ease in casual clothing because she was a professional at heart, or if it was personal bias and years of knowing her as the therapist in the office that colored my perceptions.  Her hair was damp, and she had what might’ve been a folded paper towel, soaked with water, resting on the back of her neck.  She collected a drink she must have ordered and paid for earlier.

“Doing alright?” I asked.

Jessica smiled.  “I was cooling down.  I’ll be glad when the weather is more comfortably cool.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “It’s not that I mind the heat.  It’s that I worry about how it affects people.  I get antsy when the weather is like this.”

Jessica nodded.  She glanced out the window.  “It doesn’t help.”

“Brockton Bay was always nice, weather-wise.  It didn’t have a lot going for it, but it did have mild weather.  Once upon a time.”

Jessica smiled.  “It’s good to remember the good things.  At the risk of slipping into habit, I’ll ask: how are you doing?  You’re okay, after the broken trigger incident?”

“I’m okay.  My cousin wasn’t, but she’s bounced back.  I think it was a wake-up call.”

“How so?”

“She might be reconsidering if she wants to be with the PRTCJ.  She might aim for something lower-key.  Her mom did, after things went bad in Brockton Bay.”

“I hope she’s happy and comfortable, wherever she ends up.  I did like her, when she and I crossed paths.”

At the hospital.  That fragment went unspoken.

“How’s the girl I found?” I asked.

“She’s managing.  We’re getting her stabilized and figuring out her power.  She wants to meet you at some point, to thank you.”

“She’s good, though?”

“Far better than she was.”

I nodded.

“The broken trigger aside, how have you managed since we last talked?  You talked about joining a team.”

I gave her a one-shoulder shrug.  “Pitched myself to a few.  It didn’t take.  I lost my job, the volunteer stuff feels empty.  I’ll survive in the meantime.”

“I find it very interesting that you asked about Hunter, and you wanted to clarify that she wasn’t just managing, she was good.  Then I ask you, and your response is that you’re surviving.  You’re managing.”

“You’re going therapist mode on me,” I remarked, smiling.

She smiled back.

“How are you?” I asked, before she could ask me the same.

“I’m settling into my new role, trying to wrap things up and make sure there are no loose ends as I transition.  Are you-”

“You said-” I said, inadvertently interrupting her.

“Go ahead.”

“You said you were busy.  Is busy a good thing, in Jessica-Yamada-land?”

It took her a second to answer.  Not our usual one-sided dialogue, this, her talking, me waiting for a chance to communicate, already plotting how I could say what I wanted to say as efficiently as possible.  I smiled at the observation, and I was left pretty sure she caught it, because she smiled again.

She replied, “I’m looking forward to when I have more time.  Right now, it’s balancing out.  Any exhaustion on my part is easier to deal with because the things I’m doing are new, exciting, a little terrifying, but positive overall.”

“Terrifying?  Because of the people you’re dealing with, or…?”

“When working with patients, the first and last meetings are the hardest, with the stakes greatest, and I’m having an awful lot of first and last meetings these days.  Maintaining course after the initial connections have been made is easier.  I know who I’m talking to and what I’m doing, there will be peaks, plateaus and valleys, but I can generally feel like there’s progress being made.  The first meetings and the goodbyes?  They’re critically important.”

“You want to make sure you’re laying good groundwork.”

“It’s not just that.  The wrong kind of connection or break can do a lot of damage.  Failing to realize you’re hurting a patient when you say something or take an approach, failing to be strong enough from the outset with patients who need a hard line, being too hard on patients who need a soft touch…”

I nodded.  I started to think about which I’d been, back then, but thinking back was hard and unpleasant.

“I…”  She’d started to say something, and then stopped.

“You?”

She sighed, leaning back in her seat.

“I’ve put myself in an awkward position here,” she said.  “Actually a few, including you and me sitting here having this conversation.  I want to get right to it so you’re not talking to me under the wrong pretenses, but I’m not sure how to navigate this, either.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“That’s just it,” she said.  She frowned.  “I wanted to have a conversation with you for another reason.”

That stung, in a way.  That we weren’t meeting up for the sake of meeting up.

“Okay,” I said.

“I might have made a mistake,” she said.  “And I was thinking you might be able to help.”

“A mistake?”

“I worry it’s the case.  Time will tell, but I can make educated guesses and I have concerns.”

“I have to admit, I’m not sure how to respond to that,” I said.  “I’d say you’re only human or you’re only mortal, but doesn’t that sound condescending, coming from a parahuman?”

“We’re all mortal, Victoria.  Even Scion was.”

I nodded.

It was strange to hear that name spoken out loud.  Nine out of ten times, people would avoid saying it out loud.  As if they couldn’t reconcile the first hero with the thing that had ended the world.

“I’d like to help,” I said.  “A couple of things are off the table, obviously, but you know what they are, I think.  I wouldn’t be okay if you wanted me to reach out to my sister, or that kind of thing.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to do that, no.  This isn’t anything of that scale, but…” she frowned.  “Given our relationship, with you having been my patient, there’s a power imbalance.  I want to do what I can to ensure I don’t abuse it.  I want to be fair to you.”

“Okay,” I said.  After a pause, I added, “I appreciate the sentiment.”

“Even if this turns out to be minor, it is hard to do without risking a breach of trust and damage to our friendship.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I want to ensure we’re on the same page, when it comes to expectations.  I definitely don’t want you to feel obligated, whether it’s because you feel you owe me something, or because you feel you should.  I know there’s a tendency among heroes to want to step forward and help.  I’ve counseled many a junior hero that they needed to learn to pick their battles.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” I said.  “I pick my battles.  Except for the broken trigger last week, the community center, and, oh, everything else.”

“It is a concern,” she said.  She matched my smile with a small one of her own, but it was fleeting, more an acknowledgement of the joke than anything.  “You’re quick to say you want to help, before you even know what I’m going to ask.”

I nodded.  “I don’t think you’d ask if you hadn’t thought over it.  I trust you.”

“I’d still be concerned, grateful as I am for your trust in me.”

I swished the ice in my iced tea.

“I am sorry,” she said.

“Sorry?”

“If I’ve upset you, approaching this like I have.”

“Did I give you that impression?  That I was upset?”  I was pretty sure my face hadn’t betrayed anything.  I was reasonably sure my power wasn’t leaking, either.

“You did.  And if I’m right about that, please don’t misunderstand me, I am sorry, and I wouldn’t fault you for being upset.  I would like to have meetings like the one I think you were anticipating today.  You and me, staying in touch to a degree, talking over iced tea and ice coffee.  I’d hoped to have one of those meetings before getting around to this topic.”

So it wasn’t too urgent, then.

“Okay,” I said.  I took another careful sip of my iced tea.

She drew in a deep breath, reached back to where the damp, folded paper towel was laying against her neck, and set it within the lid of her iced coffee, which she’d put to one side.  She stared down at it for a moment.

I waited.  I had some ideas about what she was getting around to.  I also had things I might have said, but I was worried that, depending on what she was going to say next, they could be things I’d regret.  If her reasons were good, if they were personal…

I was so fucking done with regrets.  I didn’t want to add more, especially any tied to Jessica.

“I don’t want to compound my mistakes elsewhere with one here.  With that in mind, I want to make it absolutely clear that this isn’t an obligation.  I’d like a bit of help, if you heard me out and were comfortable giving it.  I’d explain the situation as best as I could, but the confidentiality of other patients makes things difficult.”

“What do you need?”

“Before we get into that, touching back on what I said before about wanting to be fair to you, I’ve contacted a colleague.  He’ll be your therapist if you still want one.  He’s waiting for your call and he’ll make an appointment with you.”

“You didn’t have to do that.  I wouldn’t want to burden you guys more.  What’s going on, that you’re going to all this?”

“Maybe it’s necessary, maybe not, but it’s my apology and my thanks to you for having this conversation with me, and for any compromise of the relationship.  It doesn’t mean you have to hear me out, and it absolutely doesn’t mean you have to say yes.  Alright?”

“Alright, but it doesn’t matter,” I said.  “I’ll hear you out.”

“It matters to me,” she said, firm.

“Okay,” I said, a little exasperated.  It was clear Jessica was stubborn when she was bothered by something.  “Fine.  You made a mistake, you want my help.  I’ll phone your colleague and possibly go see him.  I’ll weigh what you’re asking and I’ll try to make an objective decision.  Which may be no.”

“Thank you.”

“What do you need?” I asked, again, holding my iced tea in both hands.

⊙

Mrs. Yamada wasn’t ‘Jessica’ anymore, not any more than capes went by their civilian names in costume.  She was in her professional attire, a suit jacket over a blouse, a business skirt, minimal jewelry, minimal and tasteful makeup.  Papers rustled as she paged through files and as the wind blew into the room.

She had told me to dress in a way that was comfortable for me.  It was still hot out and I’d had to travel forty miles to get to a place where Mrs. Yamada could pick me up to drive me the rest of the way.  Even though the heat persisted, the weather had broken, the humidity giving way to a light thunderstorm.  I wore a white dress with a black hood built into it, the Brockton Bay skyline printed in what looked like black and grey watercolors across the breast, the city’s name below and to the side.  There was a scribbling of more watercolor and lettering at the hem.  The white fabric was a thin sweatshirt-like material, so the hood hadn’t been much use against the rain.

The windows were open and the blinds closed, periodically clacking against the windowsills.  The wind wasn’t blowing in a direction that sent the rain into the room, but droplets still beaded the blinds closer to the bottom.  The lights felt artificially bright, in contrast to how dark the clouds and sky were outside.  The room was set up like a high school classroom, minus the ‘class’, no students, no mess, no bulletin board with scraps on it or whiteboard with weeks-old marks that hadn’t been wiped away.  Eight chairs were arranged in a ring at the center, instead of five columns of six desks.

There was a teacher’s desk at the front, and Mrs. Yamada was there, looking over some files.  I’d caught some glimpses of the pictures on the fronts, purely by accident.  I could have pried more, maybe caught a name or a heading by reading upside-down, and I’d decided not to.  She wouldn’t have wanted me to.

“Do I have a file?” I asked.  She startled a little, as if she’d forgotten I was there.

She’d been in the zone, I realized.  She might have needed to be.  She didn’t wear it on her face or in her body language, but there was a reason she was so immersed in what she was reading.

I could relate to that, in a way.  During my hospital stay, I’d delved deep into my studies, struggled with the keyboard as I read everything I could find, while furthering my studies with long-distance education.

“Sorry to interrupt,” I said.

“It’s fine.  You did have a file.  You don’t now, I’m afraid.  Unless it’s somewhere in the rubble.”

I nodded.

She glanced at the clock.  “One of the group’s members tends to arrive early.  She should be here momentarily.”

I looked up at the clock.  One fifty in the afternoon.  From how dark it was outside, I might have thought it was five hours later in the day.  “Good to know.”

“It will be interesting to see how you two get on.”

“Huh.”

I heard the footsteps and glanced at the clock again.  Not even a minute had elapsed.  Was this person that punctual?

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected.  She wasn’t yet a teenager,  or if she was then she was a late bloomer, but she wasn’t wholly a ‘child’ either.  ‘Tween’.  My first thought was that she was as cute as a button, and not in the pink princess way.

She was black, her arms and legs long and skinny, her eyes large in proportion to her face.  She was studying me with just as much or more intensity than I studied her, as we sized each other up.

She was dressed or had been dressed with an eye for modern fashion, fitting to her age.  She wore a blue corduroy pinafore dress with metal studs forming a star shape at the leg.  Her top was a t-shirt, with an image on it in sequins, the kind that had two different images, depending on the direction the sequins were swept.  The image depicted a blue heart if brushed one way, a yellow star if swept the other; I knew because it was a jumbled mix of both.

The reason I thought that she might have been dressed by someone else was that she was so very precise about how she’d put her outfit together.  It was freshly ironed or fresh off the rack, and it was color matched from her shoes to the pins and ties in her hair.  The star theme too.  Kinky black hair had been fixed into place at the side of her head with a star pin, and carefully arranged into two small, tight buns at the back.  Glossy and taken care of, not a strand out of place.  It would have taken me twenty or thirty minutes to do the same, and my straight hair would have been easier to manage, even being as long as it was.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I responded.

“Gosh, you’re pretty,” she said.

I was momentarily lost for words.  Very direct.

“Thank you,” I said, glancing back at Mrs. Yamada, hoping for a cue.  She was focusing on her notes.  She briefly met my eye, but communicated nothing.

“I can tell you were a hero.  You have that air about you,” the girl said.

“Thank you,” I said, a little caught off guard.  “It’s nice to meet you.”

She smiled, her enthusiasm renewed, “It’s amazing to meet you.  I’m really interested to hear what you have to say.  I really want to be a hero, so I’m trying to learn all I can.”

“That could be good.  It’s better than the alternative, at least.”

“Isn’t it?  You were probably a good one, weren’t you?  You give me that impression.  You’re stylish, I really like your dress, and you have that posture, back straight, unyielding.  Only the best and the true up-and-comers have that.”

“Kenzie,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“Yes?”

“There’s no pressure.”

Kenzie only smiled in response.

“It’s okay,” I said.  I was glad to have a window to speak.  “I like your outfit too, Kenzie.  Good clothes are so hard to get these days, aren’t they?”

“This outfit was part of a birthday present, but I think it was expensive, yeah.  I wanted to look nicer since we had someone new today.”

“There’s no need to go to extra trouble.  Not for me.”

“No trouble, no trouble,” she said, very cavalier.  She looked at Mrs. Yamada, “How are you today, Mrs. Yamada?”

“I’m doing very well today, Kenzie.  How are you this morning?”

“Can’t complain,” Kenzie said.  “Does it matter where I sit?”

“Nothing’s changed from the prior sessions.  Sit wherever you’re comfortable, it doesn’t matter.”

Kenzie smiled.  “I think it matters.  It means something.  Can I sit here?”

“Sure,” I said.

She seated herself in the chair next to the one I was standing beside.

I snuck a glance at Mrs. Yamada, and I saw concern.  Because of the others who were due to arrive?

“You probably caught my name, I’m Kenzie.”

She was extending a hand for me to shake.  I shook it, then turned the chair a bit as I sat down.  “Victoria.  Some call me Vicky, but I’m using that less these days.  You can use it if it’s easier.”

“And you’re a heroine?”

“I used to be.  I’m on hiatus.”

“That’s the coolest thing,” Kenzie said.  “Costumes, fighting bad guys.”

“It had its ups and downs,” I said.  I glanced at Mrs. Yamada.  Her focus was on her notes.

She noticed me looking and asked, “You used to be her patient?”

“I did.”

“She’s the best,” Kenzie said, leaning over and speaking with a voice quiet enough that Mrs. Yamada wouldn’t necessarily hear.

“Yeah,” I said.  Except for her apparent mistake here, which I wasn’t equipped to make a judgment call on.  Not quite yet.

“It’s good here; I always look forward to coming.  Everyone’s pretty neat.  That might not mean a lot coming from me, though.”

“How come?”

“I think everyone’s pretty neat,” she said.

“I see.  That’s admirable.”

The papers rustled.  Mrs. Yamada put the files in a filing cabinet beside the desk at the end of the room, locking them away.  She spoke aloud, “Can I get you two anything?  Water?”

“I’m fine, but thank you,” Kenzie said.

“No thank you,” I said.

“The others may be a bit late, with the weather being what it is.”

“I think we’ll survive the wait,” Kenzie said.  “Right, Victoria?”

“We’ll survive.  Past years have taught me patience, if nothing else,” I said.

“From being a Ward?  Were you a Ward?” Kenzie asked.

That wasn’t where or why, I thought, but I said, “Very briefly.  My family had a team.  Still does, kind of.”

Very kind of.

“Oh, wow, neat.”

I tried to find a diplomatic way to respond to that.

“Or not so neat?” Kenzie said.

“Ups and downs,” I said.

“I was with the PRT, but I wasn’t a Ward exactly,” she said.  “They had trouble sticking me anywhere, and then I went into training, and got to do a lot of really neat camps and exercises and travel, because they had to wait until I was old enough before they could put me where they really wanted to put me.”

“Which was?”

“Watchdog, grrr,” she said.  She’d made a pretty sad attempt at a growl, mischief in her eyes.  “That other branch that worked under the PRT that you almost never hear about.  Oversight and investigation, powers, money, and politics.”

“I know of Watchdog.”

“Cubicle superheroes.”

“They’re actually pretty badass from what I heard, and they do- did a lot of fieldwork and investigations, raiding offices, interrogations, talking to politicians, uncovering conspiracies.”

“That’s true.”

“There’s something about getting organized and going after that thinker or that tinker who’s been working behind the scenes, the guy that’s been subverting society for their own gain, when they’ve probably spent months or years making contingency plans and anticipating the day their world and their plans come crashing down around them.  I think that dynamic is pretty damn cool, the approach and the complexity of it.”

“Hmm, that is cool,” she said.  “Except there aren’t any awesome costumes or monster fighting.”

“Less monster fighting, I’m sure.  I’m not sure about the costumes.  There are probably masks, I guess?”

“And there’s some cublical- bleh.  Cubicle jockeying.”

She spoke so fast she had tripped over the word.

I replied, “Probably a lot, yeah.  But from my short stint in the Wards, there was a lot of paperwork there too.”

“That’s so true.  I was kind of a Ward, so I had to do some.  I think I was good at the paperwork.”

I was starting to feel like she’d been the one who had fussed with her appearance, rather than any parental figure.  Someone so fussy would’ve somehow been mentioned in the life story to this point.  It was very believable, too, to draw a connection between the fastidious appearance and her pride in the paperwork.

“I think I was too.”

She nodded, the conversation momentarily, almost mercifully pausing, then she found her place, enthusiasm returning.  “So yeah.  I was bouncing all over the place.  The Youth Guard stepped in, I’m not sure if you’ve had to deal with them.”

The Youth Guard or the Y.G. were the group that acted like the union that protected minors in Hollywood.  That had protected minors in Hollywood.  They were the group that made sure that Wards’ education and options didn’t suffer as a consequence for them being superheroes, that they didn’t dress provocatively, that they were safe and sane, that nobody took advantage, and other stuff.  They’d reached out to my parents at one point, because they weren’t limited to the PRT.  They were a guillotine that had hung over the heads of any team with under-eighteen heroes or heroines.

“I’ve heard the horror stories,” I said.

“They weren’t a horror story for me.  They said I was being moved around too much and I needed to go somewhere to stay.  Not going to the fun camps and training sucked, but I went back to Baltimore, and I got to set up my workshop, fi-nuh-ly.”

“Workshop, huh?”

“Kenzie,” Mrs. Yamada spoke up.  She still sat at the desk.  “You might want to be mindful of what you reveal.  I’ll get into that more when things get started, but take a moment and think before revealing things that might tie into your cape identity, or identifying parts of your background.”

“Yes, Mrs. Yamada,” Kenzie said.  Then she leaned close to me, whispering, “I took a moment to think and I think I’m safe telling you I’m a tinker.”

“Gotcha,” I said, mimicking her volume and whisper.

“Yep,” she said.  She pitched her voice lower, “The Youth Guard was good to me.  I liked the people who I worked with there, even if the people in charge of me didn’t.  Some of my favorite people next to Mrs. Yamada worked for them.  Not that that lasted for long.  That was only the spring of twenty-thirteen-”

As she talked, I glanced at Mrs. Yamada.  It was clear she heard.

“-and then, well…”

“Yeah,” I said.

Gold Morning.

I was a little caught off guard by Kenzie, on a few fronts.  This wasn’t what I’d expected.  I glanced at the other chairs.

⊙

I got into a more comfortable position in the little booth, leaning against the window and taking a moment to digest what Mrs. Yamada had shared.  Someone else walked into the dark little shop, going straight to the counter, their eyes on the desserts behind the display.

“Group therapy?” I asked.

“With the full-time position I’m taking with the Wardens, I have the chance to help a lot of critical individuals.  The people I’ll be helping will be people who can help a lot of people in turn.  An incredible number, in some cases.  As attached as I am to my current patient caseload, and as much as I would like to take you on as a patient, it made the most sense to go this route.”

“Okay,” I said.

She frowned a little.

“But?” I asked.

“The role I held between Gold Morning and now was always going to be a transient one.  My patients and everyone else involved knew I was only seeing the patients I’m seeing now in a temporary way.  I’m one of several therapists who are rotating through a patient caseload, and only half were my patients and mine alone.  In making a transition, it is and was still my responsibility to look after those exclusive patients.”

“Okay.”  I connected that thought to how she’d found a therapist for me.  When it was a chore to get therapists to take new patients, it amounted to a pretty meaningful gesture.

“I’m referring the ones I can to other therapists.  I’m in touch with twelve people who work with parahumans and a few who are breaking into that field.  Not a single one of us is working less than seventy hours a week.  Some of my patients didn’t need counseling anymore, and I was only helping them to find their equilibrium after Gold Morning.  Others are on their way to a new facility in this world’s Europe, which they’ve been anticipating for over a year now.  If you were still in the same condition as you were when I first met you, I would be recommending you go there.”

I nodded.  I didn’t like thinking about it.

“I couldn’t find places for everyone, and I’d turn down the job before I abandoned patients in need.  With the remainder, I saw common ground among them.  Not all of them, but enough of them that it seemed like things could be workable.  Some supplied, needed, or were looking into the same kinds of assistance, which is what prompted the line of thinking.  I was going to introduce them regardless, I could see them talking, and I thought it would be best to have the initial and deeper talks in a supervised setting.”

“And from there, it was a short jump to thinking about group therapy.”

“Yes.  Group therapy, interpersonal group therapy, seemed appropriate for what I wanted them to address with each of them.  It meant that in the time before I took on my full-time role with the Wardens, I could devote more time to more of them.  In an ideal world, if there were some who still needed attention by the time I was done, I could call in favors or find places for them.”

“Okay,” I said.  “Was it group therapy like I was a part of?”

“The therapy you were a part of was encounter-driven.  Different.  More involved, more simulations, acting and role-playing, confrontation, learning assertiveness as opposed to, say, aggressive behavior, or overly passive behavior.  Engaging with peers.”

“I didn’t really do anything except sit there.”

“But you wrote the scripts.  You listened to the others, and you visualized ways you wanted the conversations to go.  I got the impression it was pretty intense, even when you were a step removed in your participation.”

“Sure,” I said.  A large part of what I’d contributed to those sessions had played into my last interaction with my mom.

Not that that interaction had gone well, but I could imagine that if I’d found myself in that same situation without the grounding of knowledge from those sessions, I might not have had the words to articulate as much of what I’d wanted to.  It was even possible that, without the conflict resolution skills, I might have hurt someone.

The recollections of the therapy and of my mom were heavy, pressing down on me and my chest.  I took a long sip of my iced tea.  It was cold and sensory, pulling me away from that rabbit hole of dark thoughts.

“This group was intended to be slower-paced, less intense,” she said.

“Even with the time constraint?”

“Yes, even with.  Part of it is that, as I said, it was the most appropriate for what I wanted to address.”

“Part?”

“The other part ties back to what I said about introductions, how the first meetings are the trickiest.  It was a delicate balancing act to begin with, compared to your group, where we added someone new once every few weeks or months, while the rest of the group remained fairly stable.  With this group, having them all meet at once, I thought it would be best to keep things calmer.”

“Makes sense,” I said.

“My colleagues like to say there is a truism with groups of parahumans.  That the larger the group in question, the greater the chance of a schism or disaster.  I’m not sure I like exactly how the idea is presented a lot of the time it comes up, but…”

I thought of my sister.

“Groups of capes get pretty volatile,” I finished the sentence for her.  “Each person you add is another chance for things to go wrong.”

⊙

Three more members joined the group.  An unknown boy and two people I knew, male and female.

When I realized who I was looking at, though, my jaw dropped.  I stood from my chair.

She, for her part, was on a similar page.  She stared at me, confused at first.  Then reality dawned for her as well.

She was pale in a way that skin didn’t tend to be, and she had a mane of black hair.  A small black tattoo marked her cheekbone, partially obscured by skin-tone makeup that had streaked in the rain.  For all that she was almost monochrome from the neck up, she was a riot of color from the neck down.  Sveta.

Her hands went to her mouth.

She closed the distance between us with a half-stagger, half-run kind of movement.  I caught a glimpse of her tearing up before she threw her arms around me, colliding with me.  I caught my bearings and hugged her back.

“You’re okay,” she mumbled into my shoulder.

“I’m-” I started, lost for words.  I looked at Weld, who stood in the doorway, smiling as wide as I’d ever seen him smile.

My arms still around her, I reached out with one hand, groping in Weld’s general direction, as if I could get the words that way.

“Fantastic,” Weld said.  “This is perfect.”

He looked a little less neat than he’d been when I’d known him in Brockton Bay, but not as wild or ‘monstrous’ as I’d seen in the pictures online, back when he’d been a member of the Irregulars.  His skin was dark iron, his eyes silver, veins of more silver tracing from the corners of the eyes.  His hair was wire, made to look more free and unruly.  He was wearing a henley shirt, khaki shorts and sandals that looked like they were made of metal and what might’ve been tire rubber.  I couldn’t imagine any other material that would hold up when bearing the weight of someone that was heavy metal from head to toe.

Beside him was a guy, brown-skinned, with the sides and back of his hair cut short.  The hair on top had to have been painted rather than dyed, because it was magenta, and I couldn’t imagine getting black hair dyed magenta without bleaching it to the point of destroying it, and the rolling curls retained their shape despite the droplets of rain that clung to it.  He was smiling, but more because he looked like the type that very much enjoyed others being happy.  The magenta-haired guy’s shirt was form-fitting to his upper body, showing off lean muscle, and looked like a surfer’s rash guard.  He wore black shorts and sandals.

I turned my attention to the girl of the trio.  I couldn’t believe it was Sveta.

Who was practically sobbing now, apparently.

Emotion was welling in my own chest.  I put my hand on the back of her head, and I felt the hair stir, the tissues beneath the wig moving.

“Well, I think this has made my everything,” Weld said.

“Your everything?” the magenta-haired guy asked.

“Saying it made my day, my week, or even my month wouldn’t be enough,” Weld said, still smiling.  “You’re okay, Victoria?”

“Two arms, two legs,” I said.

“That’s great,” he said.  “Sveta was so attached to you, she hated leaving you behind.”

Sveta nodded, head rubbing against my shoulder.

“And we’d thought you’d died,” Weld said.  “When G.M. happened.  Hearing you were alive was amazing on its own, but you’re… you’re back.  Fantastic.”

Sveta made a sound, emotions pouring over, before hiccuping with a sob.

I stroked the back of her head, trusting that someone would tell me not to if it was dangerous.

Then again, I didn’t have my forcefield up.

I could have mentioned it.  I didn’t.

“You have a body,” I whispered.  I could feel it.  It was hard, unyielding.  She creaked in places, and the way she’d moved- the colors and textures I’d seen-

None of that mattered.  She had a body.

“It took some doing,” Weld said.  “It took a lot of doing.  It’s been a whole adventure to get even this far.  It’s not even tinkertech.  Regular prosthetics and some inventiveness from some really stellar people.  Arms, legs, body, some stuff to keep it upright, some machine learning systems that adapt to meet her partway, and a lot of practice on her part, to operate everything internal.”

Sveta pulled away.  She looked me in the eye, reaching up to wipe at her tears.  The hands didn’t seem cooperative enough, almost like someone holding a baseball bat by one end was trying to wipe away tears with the other.

I hesitated, before indicating her face.  “Do you want a hand?”

She nodded, and I wiped the tears away with my fingers.  She smiled, even as more welled up.

“You’re such a sneak, Jessica,” Weld said.  “Not telling us?”

“I did tell you Victoria was recovered.”

“I thought you meant she was mobile enough to get to the meeting place on her own.  I didn’t think you meant a complete and total recovery,” Weld said.

I wanted to turn to see Mrs. Yamada’s expression, but it was hard to move with Sveta hugging me.  She was silent, though.

Behind Weld, someone else was ducking into the room.  He looked like he was of a height with Kenzie, but given how boys developed slower, he might’ve been a touch older.  He had a mess of tousled brown hair that would have been over his eyes if he wasn’t wearing large headphones as a kind of hairband.  He had a very flat expression as he walked around the perimeter of the room.  His t-shirt was black with a logo I didn’t recognize, his cargo shorts had stuff packed into the pockets, but he mostly looked like a very average kid.  Only his old fashioned braces really stood out to me- the kind that made it hard for him to put his lips together.

Sveta twisted around, one hand reaching out to me to steady herself.  She looked over at Kenzie, then at the magenta-haired fellow, and then at the new kid.  She failed on her first attempt at speaking, then managed.  “She was my first friend ever, that I can remember.”

“I didn’t know that,” I murmured.

“I didn’t have anyone, and- there was a time where I was cooped up in a sealed room in the hospital and stuff was going on outside, with the PRT and the other case fifty-threes.  They introduced me to people who were harder for me to hurt.  Victoria was one of them.  I liked her, and she knew Weld, and she put up with me for some reason, so we kept talking and meeting.”

I leaned closer, whispering in her ear.  “For some reason?  You helped keep me sane.  You were my friend.”

“Stop it, dummy.  You’re going to make me cry more,” she whispered back.  “And I can’t believe I’m finally hearing your voice for real.”

And with that last statement she was tearing up more.

“Since when are you this much of a crier?” I asked.

“I’m all emotionally open and shit now,” she whispered.  “Blame Weld.  And blame yourself, being all normal and stuff.”

“I’m pretty sure I just caught you saying my name just now,” Weld said.  “Maybe that’s my cue to duck out before you start badmouthing me.”

“I’d never ever badmouth you,” Sveta said, at normal volume.  She’d turned to face him, and I held her arm to steady her as she swayed a bit.  “What would I even say?”

“I hear people coming anyway,” Weld said.  He stopped, looking at Sveta and me, then smiled wide.  “This is fantastic.”

Sveta hugged my arm.

“You’ve said that a lot,” the Magenta-haired boy said.

“I can’t even begin to tell you,” Weld said.  “In more than one way.  I’ll leave it for Victoria to share.”

“Maybe we can chat another time,” the boy said.  “We could hang out.”

“If Sveta, Victoria, and Jessica okay it,” Weld said, clapping a hand on the guy’s shoulder.  “I don’t want to throw any wrenches into the therapy or make anything awkward by blurring lines.”

“Send me an email if you want to discuss it.  It’s always good to see you, Weld,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“I’ll do that, and it’s good to see you too, Jessica.  I’m sorry I wasn’t able to make the time to sit in.”

“Totally understandable.  Good luck.  We may run into each other if you stick with the Wardens.”

“Excellent,” Weld said.  He glanced at us, delivering a wink probably more meant for Sveta than for me.  “Fantastic.  I’ll text you when I have an idea of what’s happening with my afternoon, Sveta.”

“Good luck,” Sveta said.

With a parting salute, he was gone.

I took my seat, giving my hand to Sveta, as she collapsed into the chair on the other side of me.  Now that she wasn’t bear-hugging me, I could see that a lot of the color on her was that the prosthetic body she wore had been painted.  Bumps and collisions had chipped some of the paint, but from the neck down, everything that wasn’t covered in clothing was painted in rolling waves, in sea serpents, birds and reptiles.  The colors were bright and bold, like graffiti, the living things hot orange, the background cool blues and greens.  Her clothes were relatively plain, a black top and brown pants, and looked to be relatively thick and durable, but the plain-ness was marred by the small streaks and smudges of paint that she’d gotten on it, most of it in long, thin slashes.

The seating arrangement put me between her and Kenzie.  Kenzie, for the time being, was leaning over to the new addition to the group, the boy with braces.  She seemed to be filling him in on what he’d missed.

“Tristan,” the magenta-haired boy said, approaching.  He extended a hand.  I shook it.

“Victoria.”

“Will your brother be joining us today?” Mrs. Yamada asked.

“I asked, he didn’t reply,” Tristan said.

“Brother?” I asked.

“Twin,” Tristan said.  He pointed at his hair.  “Part of the reason I make myself so easily identifiable.  He’s Byron, he used to have blue-green hair to match me, but he quit doing that.”

“Good to know,” I said.

Blue hair.

I thought of my youngest cousin. Where Crystal had always had the red-magenta look, Eric had gone with the blue, dying his hair.  It was a sad, wistful thought.  With so many losses in recent memory, so much tumult, it felt very distant.  That distance didn’t make it it feel any less painful.  If I’d been burned on an hourly, daily or weekly basis for the last four years, the death of Eric and Uncle Neil would have been the very first time my hand was shoved down and held to the oven ring.

Alarming and hard to process in how devastating and raw it had been, important, but still a very long time ago.

I changed up my focus, “You all came in together.  Are you friends?”

“No.  Or kind of?” Tristan asked.

“Kind of,” Sveta said.

Tristan explained, “I ran into Weld and Sveta on the way into the first session.  He dropped her off at the front door because he had a place to be, and I offered my arm.  Sveta and I geeked out together over Weld.”

“He’s geek-out worthy,” I said.

Tristan smiled.  “Does the impromptu Weld fan club have another member?”

“Nah,” I said.  “No, I’m just a fan in a very mundane way.  I think he’s a good guy.”

Sveta nodded emphatically.

“At our first meeting, Tristan kept saying he was Weld’s number one fan,” Kenzie joined in.

“Oh, that.  Don’t remind me,” Tristan said.

“I won’t, then,” Kenzie said, deflating a little.

Tristan sighed, glancing at the rest of the room.  “Nah, it’s no good to leave our guest in the lurch, and I’m supposed to be holding myself accountable.  You might as well share, I’ll take my licks.”

“Alright,” Kenzie said, perking up considerably at the same time Tristan withered.  “So Tristan kept saying it, casually mentioning the posters he had before, and he had merchandise.”

“Weld figurine, from his stint in the Boston Wards.  One where he was wearing his first costume, too,” Tristan said.  “I miss that thing.”

“I want one,” Sveta said.  “Would it be weird if I had one?”

Kenzie continued, “So he kept saying all that, because he was so psyched he got to meet Weld.  Then Sveta finally speaks up, and she was very quiet when she said it, but she said ‘I probably have you beat.’”

“I’m competitive,” Tristan said.  “So I was pretty adamant that no, no she didn’t.”

Sveta looked like she was on top of the world, smiling to herself.  She wiped at her face with one prosthetic hand- she still had tracks of tears on her face.  I leaned closer, whispering.  “Want a tissue?”

She nodded.  I stood from my seat while the conversation continued.

“…And she says she’s his girlfriend,” Kenzie said.

Tristan sighed.  “Yep.”

“She’s living with him, and they sleep in the same bed, and they make each other breakfast,” Kenzie said.

I liked the mental image.  I liked that Sveta was smiling as much as she was.

“It’s hard to beat that,” Tristan said.

I collected a tissue from Mrs. Yamada’s desk, glancing at her.  She seemed pretty unbothered by this, so far.

“I don’t think it’s about winning,” Sveta said.

I handed the tissue to Sveta as I retook my seat, and she set about patting her cheeks dry.  A little bit more of the cover-up makeup came away from the tattoo.

“Yeahhhh,” Tristan drew out the word.  He added,  “Easy to say when you’re the clear winner.”

“That’s fair,” Sveta said.

“That’s a joke, by the way.  I’m not being serious here.”

“Yeah,” Sveta said.  “I was wondering there.”

Another person had entered the room.  A boy, Caucasian, with shoulder-length brown-blond hair.  He had a cut under one eye and another cut on the bridge of his nose.  His jeans were ripped at the knee and his shirt was baggy, a size too big for him.  The sleeves were long, red where the torso was white, and they had been rolled up to the elbow.  His sneakers had seen a lot of abuse, by the looks of it.  The white parts were brown and grey in a way that made me suspicious that even a thorough cleaning wouldn’t get them purely white again.  He looked sixteen or seventeen.

“But yeah, damn, I don’t look good enough in a dress, so I have to concede.  Hey Rain,” Tristan said.

“Heya,” the boy who was apparently called ‘Rain’ said.  He took the empty seat next to Tristan. “Why are you wearing a dress?”

“Just joking around.”

There were still two empty seats.  One would be Jessica’s.  There’d be one more, then.

“You made it here okay?” Tristan asked.

“Yeah.  I got a ride.”

“How are things?” Kenzie asked Rain.  She gestured at her head in a way I didn’t see, with her head blocking my view of the hand on the other side.

Rain seemed to take a second to ponder it.  He frowned a little.  “Not great.”

“Better or worse than last week?” Kenzie asked.

“Let’s save the therapy-relevant stuff for the session,” Mrs. Yamada interrupted.  “Small talk and catching up for now, please.  We don’t want to get started before everyone’s here, and I want to go over ground rules and expectations before we ask anything too personal.”

Kenzie smiled and shrugged, settling back into her seat, hands in her lap.

“Alright,” Rain said.  He turned his attention to me.  “This is the heroine?”

“Ex-, kind of,” I said.  “But yeah.  Victoria.”

“Hi.  I’m Rain.  Spelled like the water that falls from the sky.”

“Cape or civilian name?” I asked.

“I hate that you have to ask.  Civilian.  And before you comment on it, yeah, I know.  It’s unusual, I’ve heard the jokes.”

He’d said it as if his patience on the subject had run short a long time ago.  I threw up my hands in mock surrender, my mouth firmly shut.

He said, “You said ex, but you didn’t sound sure.  Are you taking a break?  Or…?”

“Trying to get back into it after a break, but ended up taking another short break to focus on some background stuff.   Getting a handle on things.”

“Yeah,” he said, as if I’d said something very heavy, and he’d felt part of that weight.  “I feel like I’ve been trying to get a handle on things since I got my powers.”

“For a while now, then?  If I can ask?”

“Just under a year ago,” he said.  “I think, along with Chris, I’m the rookie here.”

Post-Gold Morning.  That helped put things in context.

Chris, too.  By process of elimination, he’d be the boy roughly Kenzie’s age.

“Family thing.  You said that once,” Kenzie said.  Rain acknowledged that with a nod.

“Second gen?” I asked.  I wondered if I had any kindred on that front.

“There are a lot of questions you can ask about the parahuman stuff,” he said.  “When it comes to me, the answer to most of them is ‘it’s complicated’.”

“That’s fair,” I said.  “For a while now I’ve thought that parahumans should get a membership card, materializing in our hands when we trigger, or arriving in the mail at the first opportunity.  A warning on one side, ‘handle with care’, and then on the other side, ‘shit is complicated, don’t ask’.  Something that we can flash now and again, like a get out of jail free card.”

“Mine would be worn out, both sides,” Rain said.

“I could get good mileage out of the ‘shit is complicated’ side,” Tristan said.

“Now I feel left out,” Kenzie said.  “I’d like to think mine would be nice and neat, stored away as a just-in-case.”

“Really?” Tristan asked.  “Really?”

“Ruh-heally,” Kenzie said, with exaggerated emphasis and a roll of the eyes.  Tristan mirrored her pose some.

“I do like the idea,” Rain said.  “The card.”

Rain wasn’t a smiler, by the looks of it, but he’d seemed to relax more as I talked to him.

“By the way, I should have asked, am I allowed to swear?” I asked, twisting around to face Mrs. Yamada.

“Swearing is fine In moderation,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “Being here wouldn’t be nearly as positive if you couldn’t say what you wanted to say.  There’s a point where swearing takes away from the communication and expression I’m hoping to see, where you hide behind the swearing, or where it’s disruptive.  I think you six have a good sense of where that point is.  I may referee if we get close to it.”

“Alright,” I said.

“I remember the group therapy session we had back at the hospital,” Sveta said.

“Yeah,” I said.  Sveta had only been there for the initial sessions.  She’d left, I’d stayed.  “Plenty of swearing.  But it was different, and we didn’t have any kids in the group.”

“Well, not young kids,” Sveta said.

I looked over at Kenzie and Chris.  “Will I be overstepping or bothering you if I call you kids?  I’m not sure where the comfort zones are.”

Kenzie snorted.  “It’s fine.”

“Nah,” Chris said, “Hospital?  You were at the Asylum?”

He’d barely hesitated a second.  He’d been so quiet up until now, and then the moment I’d given him an avenue to join the conversation, he went straight from negation to asking questions.

Not pleasant questions either.

“Oh.  Sorry,” Sveta said, to me.  “I should have thought you might not want to broadcast it.  I’m sorry.  I kind of brought it up earlier, too.”

On its own, it was something I could handle most of the time, but it might have been a return to the group therapy session, the presence of Sveta and Mrs. Yamada, even, and possibly the fact that I’d had a few reminders and it was harder and harder to surface, while it almost felt like Chris was pressing down.

Dark, uncomfortable memories stirred.  Being paralyzed, silent, the interminable restlessness.  The way the things on the television and radio had been almost unbearable to see and listen to, not because of the subject matter, but because of my inability to change the channel or shut it off, even though I’d asked for it to be put on in the first place.

I had to take a second to swallow and remember normal breathing and cadence again, after thinking about it.

“Let’s not put too much pressure on Victoria, please,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “I understand that you might feel the need to vet her or figure out if you can trust her, and that makes sense, given the degree of what’s shared here, but let’s be fair.  Let’s keep the small talk small, I’ll outline things as we start, and you can decide if you’re uncomfortable.  If you are, then we’ll figure out a way to move forward.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“If you’re sure.”

“It’s fine,” I said, glad I was able to find and use a normal tone of voice without any giveaway.  I turned back to Chris, “Yeah.  I was there.  Arrived midway through twenty-eleven, year and a half, and then the Asylum-supported housing after.”

“Right,” Chris said.  “Brockton Bay before that?”

“Yeah,” I said.  I wondered for a second at his jumping to the conclusion, before I remembered I had the city and its name on my dress.

“There was a lot of Brockton Bay in the news, before,” he observed.

“Yeah,” I said.  “Not a lot of it good.”

I wasn’t sure how to approach the conversation with Chris.  He was hard to read, in fashion, in expression- I’d glance at his mouth to see if he was smiling or frowning and I’d only see the braces.  He’d been quiet up until now, too, which meant I didn’t have a lot to go on.

Something about him bothered me.  It wasn’t just the slant of his questions or the way it felt like they were pressing at me, but his demeanor, and little things about his appearance I couldn’t put my finger on.  The messiness of his hair was one of those things.  It looked like he had three cowlicks – two at either corner of his hairline and one by his temple.  With his hair pushed back by the headphones he hadn’t taken off, they looked a little like small bald patches with the way the hair splayed out from those points.  He held his hands with his fingers curled in.  It was offputting in a mild way that lined up with how he came hitting me with those uncomfortable, prying questions and comments.

I wondered if he was one of the ones Mrs. Yamada had been worried about, as part of this group.  One of the additions that catalyzed something volatile.

That might have been unfair.

“Weld was there for a lot of it,” Sveta said, backing me up.  “I’ve heard some of what happened.  Things got scary.”

In all fairness, as fond as I was of her, I did find something amusing in how it was Sveta saying that last bit.  “Scary’s a good way to put it.”

“But you’re still wearing the shirt,” Rain observed.  “You’re attached to the city.”

“Sure.  It’s my city.  I grew up there.”

“But you admit it was scary?” Rain asked.

“The city isn’t defined by what happened to it.  Just like we aren’t the bad experiences that happen to us,” I said.

“Aren’t we?” Chris asked, leaning forward in his seat, elbows on his knees.  “We’re the sum of the things that have happened to us, good or bad.”

“We aren’t,” I said, firmly.  Then, on a moment’s reflection, I added, “We can’t be.  There’s a lot of other things going into it.”

“You’re making me think back to science class,” Rain said.  “I sucked at science.  What was it?  Nature or nurture?”

“Nature versus nurture, yeah,” Chris said.

“That’s it,” Rain said.  “I should have remembered that.  Are you all about the nature, then?”

I thought of my family.  I’m not sure that’s much better. 

Amy had agonized over that one.

“We’re getting into territory that’s close to being therapy again,” Mrs. Yamada said, rescuing me from the line of thinking.  “So I’m going to interrupt.  But it’s a good point to keep in mind for our discussions later today.  I’m keeping an eye on the clock, and we’re ready to start.”

Sounds good, I thought.  I glanced at the empty chairs.

She walked around the perimeter of the room, stopping when she stood behind one of the empty chairs.  “Let me recap for our visitor and remind the rest of the group what I said at the start of the first session.  This particular type of group therapy focuses on self-reflection, effective socializing, supporting each other, helping to problem solve, and examining the patterns we fall into, both the constructive and the problematic.  Each of you has spent some time with me working on these things, and this is the platform where we put a lot of that into practice.”

“My role in this, Victoria, is to be the referee and the coach.  I’ll try to ensure everyone gets their turn and has a voice.  I’ll try to head off or steer the discussion if it gets into less constructive territory, and to keep things moving if needed.  I’ll be chiming in periodically to ensure that confidentiality is stressed.  I’ve had Victoria review the same materials I gave the rest of you.”

I nodded.

“While I can promise you confidentiality on my part, and while I’ll encourage you all to maintain it, I can’t guarantee it.  If any of you were to pursue villainous activities, the other members of the group could be compelled to testify against you.  ”

The final member of the group entered the room.  She was somewhere between eighteen and twenty, but her height might have been deceiving.  Her white hair was long enough to reach the small of her back, her irises especially pale or similarly white, and she wore a black dress with a dozen straps overlapping in an intricate way at the shoulders and back.  The hem of the dress was damaged at one end.  Threads frayed, polyester melted, with a noticeable hole in it.

“Hi, boss,” Kenzie said, a twinkle of mischief in her eye as Mrs. Yamada gave her a stern look.

“I’m glad you could make it, Ashley,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “I’ve spent the last minute or two going over the basics, reminding others about the aims of the group and how confidentiality works in a group session.”

“To fill in our guest?” ‘Ashley’ asked.  She went straight to the table at the side of the room where a pitcher of water and paper cups were arranged, pouring herself a glass.

“Yes.  Her name is Victoria.  If you’ll take a seat, I’ll bring you anything else you need, but I’d like for everyone to be seated so I can continue.”

Ashley walked around behind me and circled the perimeter of the group to reach one of the empty seats.  She swept her hand behind her to brush her dress to one side, so it wouldn’t bunch up awkwardly beneath her as she took a seat on one of the two chairs between Rain and Chris.

She stared at me.  Maybe it would have been better to say she stared me down.

I, meanwhile, was left to digest the mistake of Mrs. Yamada’s that I was here to help address.  I was ninety-five percent sure I knew who ‘Ashley’ was when she was in costume, and I was left to take that knowledge and see how it fit together with the issue at hand.

Mrs. Yamada continued, “Use your own discretion when deciding what to share.  You’ve all agreed to participate, knowing the risks and difficulties inherent.  I’m hopeful this will be a positive set of exercises.  I think that more or less sums it up.  I suspect Victoria’s presence and the fact you’ve all had a week to think about what we talked about last session means you’ll have some questions.”

“It’s pretty late to be bringing her in,” Ashley said.  “Is she joining the group?”

“We hadn’t planned on her joining, per se,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “I invited her because she’s exceptionally well equipped to address the topics that came up last session. We’ll build on it and you can decide what you’re willing to share here.  During our next and final session, depending on your comfort levels and how much you want to carry on today’s discussion, she may or may not be in attendance, or not for the full duration.”

“Is it really an ‘issue’?” Tristan asked, making air quotes.

“I think it could be.  Victoria can expand on why, shortly.”

“Are we supposed to know who she is?” Ashley asked.

I glanced at Mrs. Yamada.  She was taking her seat between Ashley and Chris.  From the gesture in my direction, and the fact that she wasn’t stepping in, the ‘referee’ was leaving the ball in my court.

“I’m Victoria Dallon.  If you study Parahumans, my family comes up, because it’s a literal textbook case of powers running in families.  I… believe you’ve run into my family, Ashley.”

“Have I?  I’ve met so many capes it’s hard to keep track.”

“Do you know New Wave?” I asked.  “White bodysuits, symbols in colors?”

“I know a few people like that.  I didn’t always pay attention to names.”

“Would’ve been in Boston.  The slang term in the ‘scene’ was the Boston Games.”

Ashley smiled for the first time.

For the rest of the room, I explained, keeping half of an eye on Mrs. Yamada, to make sure I wasn’t overstepping.  “A series of arrests in Boston saw a shift in the power balance of local gangs.  That’s a pretty common thing, but the Protectorate team followed up on it hard, toppling just about every major and most minor gangs and villains in the city, leaving a void that was bigger than usual.  Villains of every power level and stripe flocked to the city, villains in neighboring cities had a vested interest in having a foothold there as a place to retreat to or a place to expand, and it became an entangled nightmare of villain politics and power plays.”

“Time of my life,” Ashley said.

“Heroes, like the PRT, and like my family’s team, followed, to try and keep the peace until things settled.  My family’s team was Lady Photon, Manpower, Flashbang, Brandish, Lightstar and Fleur.”

“The heroes without masks,” Ashley said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I remember them.  I was one of the villains who flocked,” Ashley said.

That confirmed that she was Damsel of Distress then.  B-list villain, chronic headache for the PRT of yesteryear, unpredictable, dangerous, unstable, and fortunately, she’d been more of a problem for herself than for others.  She had been recruited by the Slaughterhouse Nine, to pad their numbers, and had died shortly after.

Her history was one of self-sabotage punctuated by events every two or three years where she was cause for alarm.  She had thrived during the Boston Games, in a sense, enough to get her name out there to capes in Northeastern America as a just in case.

She’d later found a place in the Nine.  She was of a particular brand or species of cape, who somehow rose up when everything else was sinking.  It almost made a degree of sense, then, that in following with that pattern, she’d risen up from the grave at the same time the entire world was plunged into chaos.

Kenzie was saying something, and I was having trouble tuning in.

Slaughterhouse Nine meant Bonesaw.  Crawler.  That in turn led me to think about my last coherent, me moments, the blank in my memories, the aftermath.  It made me think about actual monsters,  and the very real possibility that Ashley was one.

“Were you there?”

It took me a second to connect with Ashley’s question.

“If you’re uncomfortable getting into it, we could change the subject,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“Could I just get some water, actually?  Sorry, you meant Boston, Ashley?”

“Yes.  During the Boston Games,” Ashley said, as Mrs. Yamada stood and went to get the water.

“I was a little too young.  I followed along back at home, where we made the dining room into a kind of headquarters, putting up a few bulletin boards.  I colored in the maps and moved pins as the territories changed hands while doing homework and stuff.  Is it a problem?”

“No,” Ashley said.

“What are your thoughts on the subject, Victoria?”  Mrs. Yamada asked, handing me the water.

I drank before answering.

“It’s fine.  Boston was mostly fine,” I said.  “My family didn’t get hurt.  To me, she was just a pin on the map of Boston we had in the living room-”

I saw Damsel’s expression shift.  A slight narrowing of the eyes.

“-And a few interesting and impressive stories my aunt, uncle, and dad brought home.”

That amended the narrowing.  Lesson learned.

“Good,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “I’m glad to hear that.  Questions, thoughts, observations?  Anyone?”

Ashley wasn’t done with the questions and comments.  The words she spoke next were an accusation, and she was very good at sounding accusatory.  “You brought her here to change our minds.”

⊙

Our conversation stalled as a waitress wiped down a table behind Jessica.  I swished the ice around my now mostly empty glass.

“I never liked the codenames,” Jessica said.

“We might be very different people in that.  There’s something fun about them.  They’re revealing.”

“They are, but they often reveal just how badly the patient wants to escape, to leave their humanity behind and dive into something well beyond humanity.  Some don’t surface completely.  Some hurt others on the way down.  Some drown in that vast, incomprehensible sea.”

I drew in a deep breath, then sighed.  “Feeling poetic?”

“My own kind of escapism, maybe.  I think sometimes about a world where all of my patients can go by their real names.”

“I’m not following the train of thought, I’m afraid.”

“I arranged the group therapy.  I thought for a long time about whether any of my patients were a significant danger to the others, or if they’d set the therapy of their peers back.  I took precautions, I pored over the notes, trying to visualize how things might go, or the topics that I could safely broach or go back to.  Like I said, the first meetings are hard.”

“Yeah.  I can imagine that.”

“And while I don’t like the way the idea is often interpreted or the conclusions it’s taken to, there’s the notion of volatility, and the exponentially increasing chance of trouble as the groups of capes grow larger.  With parahumans, things are often exaggerated, both in weak points or the hot button issues they have, or their inclination to push certain buttons.  The more you put in one place, the higher the chance of the wrong button being pushed.  That was another concern of mine.”

I nodded.  “How long has the group been running?”

“Two months and a week, with one or two sessions a week, as situations allow.  We’re not quite at the end, but it’s close.  This was supposed to be the easy middle stretch.”

“Supposed to be?  You let your guard down?”

“In a way.  Maybe from the beginning,” Jessica said.

She looked genuinely bothered.  I held my tongue.

She went on, “I spent so much time anticipating and planning for disaster, that I failed to see the other side of that coin.  I didn’t want to think of them as capes.  I sought out the things that would help them connect and find reasons to listen to one another.”

I realized what had happened.

Jessica was nodding to herself.  “That was my mistake.  We were approaching the end stretch, and I reminded them of the date we would wrap up and finish.  The conversation took a turn, and I was caught flat-footed.  They expressed interest in staying together.  They want to found a team.”

“A team of?”

“Heroes, it sounds like.”

“Is that so bad?” I asked.

“Without going into any particular detail, Victoria, several are troubled, vulnerable, or both.  No, I don’t think it’s good.”

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“It’s not my intent to change your minds,” I said.  I could see some skeptical looks on some faces as I looked around the circle.  “I’m here to give another perspective, and maybe to equip you guys with knowledge.  If you change your minds because of that- and I think Mrs. Yamada might be hoping for that, then that’s fine.  If not, then I’d hope you were all going into this with your eyes more open about what you’re doing.”

“I’ve  addressed my feelings with the group,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “At the end of the session where the topic first came up, and for a portion of the last session.  We had other things demanding our attention, so we weren’t able to cover it in any depth.”

“That would be me,” Rain said, raising a hand.

Jessica continued, “To abbreviate what I said then, and to reinforce it in the here and now: if you each carried on as you have been until the final group sessions concluded, then moved on from there with the skills and perspective you’ve gained, I think most of you would do fine.  Most of you have reached the points in your journeys where you could continue on your own, without needing the one-on-one therapy or the group sessions.  You could pursue more conventional therapy, I think anyone could, and you would have my number in case of emergencies or backsliding, but most of you would do fine.”

“Ready to be let loose into the urban wilds,” Chris said.

“Not all of us though,” Kenzie said.  “You said most, a few times.”

“Most,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “I also had private discussions with several members of the group.  I won’t say what was discussed, or with whom, but no, I don’t think everyone is ready.”

The group was silent. I assumed nobody wanted to speak up because they felt like doing so would out them as one of the people who’d had one of those private conversations.

Mrs. Yamada went on, “More to the point, beyond any and all of that, I don’t think the group would necessarily be healthy, taken outside of this setting and function.”

“You gathered us together so we could support each other,” Sveta said. “I feel like we do a good job of that. We bring out the good sides of one another.”

“In this setting, yes, I have seen that,” Jessica said. “I’m gratified it’s been so positive for most of you. But that’s in a controlled setting, with a mediator to keep things on course and help recognize the sensitive subjects and steer away from them.”

“May I?” I asked.

“Please,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “Feel free.”

“To build on what you said, I think the things I’ve noticed on the those fronts are that, well, it’s a big leap from the controlled setting of a place like this to the wild, uncontrolled setting of superheroics. Things will get bad at some point, and when they do, there’s a tendency for the bad to snowball.”

“You lived in Brockton Bay,” Tristan said. “Is it possible your sense of normal is skewed?”

“That’s- that’s honestly hard to respond to,” I said.  I didn’t miss the flicker of a smile on Tristan’s face at hearing that.  “Because there’s an answer that springs to mind that I could give you, but I don’t know where people’s limits are, I don’t want to step on toes or upset anyone by giving an example.”

“I don’t know about the others, but I can’t think of what you’d say that would potentially upset us,” Tristan said.

“I can,” Rain said.

I raised an eyebrow.

Rain leaned forward, elbows on his knees.  “I’m making a pretty big leap here, but it’s the response that jumped to mind for me, too.  I’ve been here from the start, I think I know where everyone’s at.  I think it’s okay to say it, but do you mean Gold Morning?  I could see where it would be sensitive, considering just about everyone lost someone, but I don’t think that’s going to push anyone in particular over the edge, here.”

“Yeah.  That was it, thank you,” I said.  I looked past Sveta to Tristan.  “What happened in Brockton Bay wasn’t a break from the pattern.  It was just the pattern playing out at an accelerated rate.  What I’m talking about, the snowballing, the bad things happening and then compounding each other… they still happened.  A whole lot of individual factors played into the events of that day, and into the engagements and infighting that followed.”

“When they happen more slowly, there’s time to rest,” Sveta said.

“When they happen slowly, there’s time to get used to the bad, to normalize it.  You or people you thought you knew change in reaction to those external factors without anyone realizing it and… things still compound.  The bad days come, and the unresolved stuff from the last bad days catches up or demands resolution.”

“Like Gold Morning, again,” Rain said.  “A lot of things caught up with us around then.  Or a lot of things converged to bring it about, maybe.  I wasn’t there so I don’t know.”

“I was only there for the later parts,” I said.  “But I think you’re right.”

“Things are better this time,” Sveta said.  “We’ve learned from mistakes.  It’s a fresh start.  The Endbringers are dormant, we’re finally building things without them being torn down all the time.”

“I agree with Sveta,” Tristan said.  “I really think there is a lot of work to be done before we get to a good normal, but that’s where I want to be out there doing some of that work in the best way I know how, with people I’ve come to know, like, and respect.”

“I don’t like being on the opposite side of an argument from you, Victoria,” Sveta said.  “It doesn’t feel good.”

I reached out for her hand.  She met me halfway, putting the prosthetic hand in mine.  I squeezed it, realized she might not be able to feel the squeeze, and gave it a waggle.  She smiled.

“No hard feelings, okay?” I said.  “I get it.  You want this.  Believe me when I say I want to get out and do some heroic stuff too.”

“I have a boyfriend I feel like I don’t deserve, and please don’t use that as a launchpad to get into another topic, Mrs. Yamada.”

“I’m keeping my mouth shut for the time being,” Mrs. Yamada said.

Sveta nodded.  She looked back at me.  “I missed out on most of my teenage years, I don’t remember my childhood, and I feel so behind.”

“I know.  Believe me, I get it, not to the same degree, but I share some of those same feelings,” I said.

“I know you do,” she said.  She gave me a waggle back.

“I think more than a few of us get it,” Tristan said.  “Losing years or losing time because we have to deal with shit other people don’t, and falling behind because of it.”

Sveta nodded.  “My boyfriend is out and around and he’s doing great work.  He’s been doing it for a while.  He tried to build something with the Irregulars and it went bad.  But now he’s out there again and he’s with the team, the top team I know about, he’s doing amazing stuff.  I don’t know if I can ever catch up, but I don’t want to not try.  I don’t want to let the gap widen.”

“It can’t be just about him, you know,” I said.  “I think that would be more poison than help for a relationship.”

“It’s not.  Well, I mean, it is, but it’s not about him in a him-and-me romantic sense, it’s about me and him- sorry, I’m not making sense.”

“I’m following okay,” I said.

Mrs. Yamada said, “Just take your time, find the words.”

“Back long before I even knew him, he was my reference point for figuring out where we are.  We being the C-fifty-threes.  If he was popular then we all had a shot at getting more popularity.  That was something I could hope I could have one day.  And I didn’t have a lot of hope, so it was important.”

I reached over, and gave her arm a solid pat.  I was still holding her hand.

“And we spent part of the summer touring other worlds.  We were looking for our places of birth, but mostly we were looking for mine.  I’m one of the only ones who remembers mine.”

She moved one hand over to tap a finger against her forearm.  In dark green, almost invisible as a series of dark green images between dark blue sky and dark blue waves, framed by leaping fish in neon orange, were a series of huts.

“I was waiting for some updates on my body and so we just had me in my hamster ball, and Weld is so great, so patient… but I don’t like being that dependent.  I want to be self-sufficient and I want to do it by being a hero.”

“I think that’s kind of the opposite of the toxic path,” Tristan said.  “You’ve talked about it before, Sveta, how you’re worried about how your world revolves around him.”

Sveta nodded.  “When you’re disabled, and I see myself as disabled, then your world gets smaller.  Things get harder.  It’s easy to become dependent or let down your guard.  Everything’s hard and it’s really easy to stop trying altogether, to rely on people who want to help, to do what Victoria said and normalize that behavior and let the toxicity seep into things, only to have it come to a head during an already bad day.”

“I’m just going to cut in here,” I said.  “I one hundred percent think what you’re saying is cool and good.  It’s a good mindset.  I did catch one thing you said and it made me think.  You said ‘self-sufficient’ and one of the things I was thinking about mentioning was, you know, heroing is hard, and it’s kind of hard in part because it doesn’t pay.  That can lead to self-insufficiency instead.”

“It can pay,” Tristan said.

“It can,” I said.  “But it paid in part because people wanted to put money toward it.  Because the governments backed it and put money into the PRT, which paid the heroes a decent wage with opportunities for more.  I spent my entire life seeing my mom stressing out in front of the computer or in front of the paperwork, from the time I could walk to the time I went to the hospital.”

“It can absolutely pay, though,” Tristan said.  He glanced at Mrs. Yamada and then said, “I was a member of a corporate team, I saw and participated in the fundraising and merchandising, and we did well.  We made a good bit of money.”

“Which team?” I asked.

“Reach.”

“Oh, kudos.  I know Reach,” I said.  “I’m not sure I could list off the roster as of Gold Morning but I’m more than passingly familiar.  Good team.”

“Thank you,” Tristan said.  “I mean, I’m not so worried about the money.  That’s the easy part.”

“I don’t think it’s easy at all,” I said.  “There’s a saying, um, seventy percent of couples break up because of financial issues.  The same number of cape teams break up because of the same.”

“What’s so hard about it?” Sveta asked.

“You’re providing a service, and the fruits of that service aren’t immediately tangible.  If you do everything right, get crime rates down, clean up the neighborhood, then people look at the clean streets and low crime rate and they wonder why they’re paying you.  If the crime rate stays high and things are a mess, then they wonder why they’re paying you.”

“How do you get around that?” Chris asked.

“You show your work,” I said.  “And you show it in a way that makes people believe you’re doing a good job.  Bringing in bad guys, getting on the front page, that’s a big one, but you have to factor in the work of maintaining a relationship with the media, marketing, on top of the work you’re already doing.  You can also get into fights the public is aware of, while not putting that public in danger, because putting people in danger means getting sued.”

“Which detracts from the finances,” Chris said.

“In a big way,” I said.

“Like prison rep,” Ashley said.  “Having to show you’re not to be messed with, without making such a mess that you add to your sentence.”

“Yes,” I said.  “Not an analogy I would have jumped to, but it’s a good one.”

“I wasn’t aware you went to prison,” Sveta said.

“I didn’t,” Ashley said, fixing Sveta with a level stare.  “I watch tv and read books.”

I was going to reply to that, but Tristan was already talking.  He said, “I’m not worried about the money side of things.  P.R., rep, image, media, I had advice and lessons from masters in the field, when it came to that.”

“From what I remember of Reach, I believe you,” I said.  “I do think that there’s a ton of difference between launching a new team and capitalizing on an established brand like Reach had, and between being the man in front of the cameras and the person in the background paying the bills.”

“I have to ask,” Ashley said.  She waited for me to look at her before speaking.  “What are your qualifications exactly?  You were on a struggling team?”

“I don’t want to bully Victoria, please,” Sveta said.

I was feeling the numbers disadvantage, with many things I was saying having two people responding, a number of changes in direction, and the periodic challenging questions.  Mrs. Yamada hadn’t spoken up recently.

“I’m a cape geek,” I said.

“We’re all cape geeks,” Tristan said.  “It comes with the territory of being a cape.”

“Then I’m a cape geek of a tier higher,” I said.  “Listen, my mom and dad were capes and they were talking shop around me since I was born.  My aunt, uncle, cousins- my entire immediate and pretty much my whole extended family, they were all capes.  I was giving interviews about what it was like to grow up with hero parents when I was ten.”

Tristan cut in, “Okay, but that doesn’t-”

“Hold on,” I said.  “I was asked, I’m answering.  I triggered at fourteen, I was patrolling within six months.  I had three years of time as Glory Girl, one Endbringer fight, and-”

I paused.

Sveta squeezed my hand.

“-And one run-in with the Slaughterhouse Nine, followed by almost two years in the hospital.”

I glanced at Ashley.  She hadn’t flinched at the mention of the Nine.

I went on, “I’ve seen some of the worst.  I had the best boyfriend in the world-”

“You had the second best,” Sveta said.  “I’ll fight you on this.”

“I’ll take you up on that another time,” I said.  I smiled.  “Some of my family members were some of the most amazing people, one of those family members is still with me, and I count myself lucky in that.  I was a local celebrity, and I got letters from kids saying they were inspired or I’d improved their lives by reaching out to them, spending a bit of time with them, or helping them off a bad path through nothing more than me existing.  With all of that, I think I can say I’ve experienced some of the best that being a hero has to offer, too.”

“What happened to the others?” Kenzie asked.  “The other family members?”

“Kenzie,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “It’s best to leave that be.”

“Okay,” Kenzie said.  “I didn’t mean to pry.  I’m really sorry, Victoria, for your losses.  I asked because I’ve lost people too.  I know it hurts, and I think you’re cool and you don’t deserve that hurt.”

“Thank you, Kenzie.  I’ll share, because I think it’s important for context.  We’ve all lost people and that’s a big part of our shared experience here on Earth Gimel.”

I saw people throughout the room nodding, or acknowledging that.  Interesting, to see the lone wolf villainess Ashley nod, too.  Chris, Tristan, Sveta.  Mrs. Yamada.

Rain was hard to read, but he looked introspective.

“My uncle, my cousin, and that awesome boyfriend, Leviathan, twenty-eleven.  My- another family member, you could say she got herself.  Or you could say the team dynamics, all that stuff I was talking about before, they played a role.  I wasn’t paying enough attention, I let things pass by without remark when I should have pressed, pressed when I should have held back.  And now she’s- she’s not family.  My mom, recently, just…”

I sighed.

“I’m not here to be a downer,” I said.  “I’m really not.  I do want to emphasize this isn’t a game.  There’s a chance at greatness and there’s a chance, maybe a higher chance, of disaster.  I experienced both.”

“Not to belittle that, but each and every one of us has gone through shit,” Tristan said.  “If it’s supposed to be one part of good stuff for every ten parts bad, then I think most of us are owed some good stuff.”

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be that way,” I said.  “Ashley asked who I am.  I’m a cape, born, raised, and learned.  I’m a student of capes, I obsessed over them well before I had powers and I stepped up my game in a professional capacity after I got powers.  I had date nights with my cape boyfriend where I studied and read his Wards handbook, because that’s how into it I was.  I’ve followed the trajectories of two hundred cape careers and I’ve been part of a team trying to get off the ground.  I looked seriously into what it would take to start a team back when my boyfriend was getting close to leaving the Wards, because I was worried he’d get moved to another city.”

I looked Ashley in the eyes.  “This is me.  I know cape stuff.  I know what goes into it and I know what comes from it.”

I looked at Tristan.  “The last thing it is, is fair.  You’re not owed anything.  If you roll the dice nine times and get bad results every time, you don’t have a better shot on the tenth roll because of that.”

“But,” Tristan said, and he said it with a bit of theatrical emphasis and a light in his eyes that made me really believe he had that experience in being in front of cameras and showing off for crowds.  He was more into things as he continued, “You have a better shot at getting an optimal result if you roll the dice a lot, than you would if you rolled it a couple of times, get bad results, and quit.  You have to get back up after you get knocked down.  You have to.”

“Or stand up in the first place,” Sveta said.

“Or stand up in the first place, yeah,” Tristan said. He glanced at Mrs. Yamada, then back to me.  “What you were talking about earlier, with Sveta and it being toxic to not stretch yourself out enough, it applies here.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “Tristan, can I ask why you keep looking to me?  It’s not a usual habit.”

“Oh,” Tristan said.  “I barely noticed.  I think I’m pretty used to you jumping in to tell me to back down or not get so into an argument.”

“I see,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“I guess the fact that I’m checking means I’m already aware I’m doing it again, and I should self-moderate.  Back down on my own instead of being told to.”

“Look at that, Pavlov’s dog can ring his own bell now,” Chris said.

“I’m all about the goats, thank you very much,” Tristan said.  He touched a more pronounced lock of his magenta hair.  “See, like the curling horns of a ram, right?”

Chris rolled his eyes.

Team Reach and goats?  “You’re Capricorn?” I asked.

“I am,” Tristan said.  “Bonus point for you.”

Kenzie, though, piped up with,”I like the hair-horns thing, Tristan.  I never got it before now but I think it’s neat.”

“Thank you, Kenzie,” Tristan said.  “This is part of why you’re awesome.”

Kenzie’s expression didn’t change much, but she had one leg crossed over the other, and the free-dangling foot bounced.  Like a dog wagging its tail.

Chris said, “Getting an ‘I like it’ from Kenzie is like getting a participation medal from a school event.  Everyone gets one.”

“That doesn’t make it worthless,” Kenzie said.  She flashed a smile at Chris.  “I never lie, I’m always honest when I say I like something.  What makes me different is that I say it instead of keeping it to myself, because I think the world needs more positivity.”

“I like it,” Rain said.  “I could never do it, because it takes a weird sort of social courage, but I like it.”

“Thank you,” Kenzie said.

“I think you lose this round, Chris,” Tristan said.

“How do I lose?  I wasn’t playing.”

“And,” Tristan said.  Again, that one word, almost a pronouncement, volume and emphasis shifted just a bit to get attention.  “On the topic of rounds and games, I feel like Mrs. Yamada is up to something, so I’m going to play this on a meta level and I’m going to shut myself up.  I recognize I’ve been trying to win this conversation with Victoria and I’ve been monopolizing things by jumping in every time there’s an opportunity.  I’m supposed to be listening more and trying to ‘win’ social interactions less, so I’m going to shut myself up.  The others should chime in, I trust them to say what needs to be said.”

“I’m proud of you, Tristan,” Mrs. Yamada said.

Tristan nodded.

Rain said, “I’m less proud and more amazed by the fact that your thought process went from ‘I need to try to win social interactions less’ to ‘this is a meta-scenario I can win’ in, what, twenty words?”

“What, did I?”

“And the fact he used so many words to say he was going to shut up,” Chris said.

Tristan frowned at Chris.  “You guys are harsh.”

“It’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?” Sveta asked.  “We moderate each other.  Hopefully while not being too harsh on each other.”

“It’s part of it,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “I think the ‘participation award’ comment was a little much, Chris.  You have a tendency, which has been remarked on by others in the past, to think a clever put-down is a good thing because it’s clever, when most people will take away the fact it was a put-down.”

“Alright,” Chris said.  “I didn’t think it was a good or bad thing.  Sorry Kenzie.”

He didn’t sound very sorry, but Kenzie’s dangling foot wiggled, and she nodded, wiggling slightly in her seat a bit between the motions.

Mrs. Yamada said, “The reason I’ve been somewhat quiet, despite my referee role, is more or less what Tristan intuited.  I’ve done this in the past – taking more of a backseat, giving you all more of an opportunity to respond to one another and push back against one another rather than relying on me to keep things under control.  In the early stages, I had to step in rather quickly.  I’m glad that with minimal prompting, Tristan stopped himself before reaching the point where I had to tell him to stop.”

“We’re being toyed with,” Ashley said.

“Not that,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “The end goal is to get you all ready for the real world.  Early on, the rudder needed a firm hand; as time goes on, I’m periodically hands off, seeing how you interact, until I see that you’re faring reasonably well on your own.  It’s a gradual process that requires I give you more and more trust.  Okay?”

Ashley nodded.

“It might be worth pausing to take stock in this moment.  Snapshot the feelings and thoughts you’re experiencing.  Some of you haven’t spoken up much at all.  Depending on how you view the conversation, your participation or nonparticipation, some of you might be feeling frustrated, offended, worried, or even guilty.”

“Is that last one aimed at me?” Tristan asked.  “Oh, wait, sorry, I’m supposed to have shut up.”

“It’s not aimed at you, Tristan,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “I want each of you to think about where you stand right now.  What are your feelings and where is your focus?  Have you felt like you’ve had a voice or that you’ve taken things in a positive direction?  Outside of the classroom, in a stressful situation with high stakes, these feelings could be magnified manifold.  As Victoria suggested when she was talking about the slow progression of background negativity, the bad feelings aren’t always resolved or solved, and it would be very easy for a sliver of frustration to carry forward, nettling at you or being joined by other, similar feelings, until you felt compelled to do or say something you regret.”

“Handing that irritation off to someone else,” I said.

“Yes,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “And, as a final comment on the topic from me, I brought Victoria here for several reasons.  One of them is that I do believe she knows what she’s talking about.  Another is that, from my position as a person with a measure of trust and power, with a strong feeling about what you’re committed to doing, it’s very difficult for me to both argue the points and also manage the discussion at the same time.  If I tell Tristan to give others a chance to speak, it could be seen as me trying to shut down his side of the argument.”

“I’m here as a bit of a surrogate,” I said.  “I’m here saying what you can’t.”

“In part.  I think we do disagree on some things.”

“Like the value and importance we place in cape names, to quote a recent example,” I said.  “I like them, you don’t.”

“Yes.  I did, for the record, let Victoria know I would be sitting back more than usual.”

“You did.  I didn’t expect to be ganged up on, though.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“It was mild,” I said.

“I don’t want to gang up on Victoria.  I’ve done a lot of talking too,” Sveta said.  “But I think that’s because I know Victoria, even if this is our first time really talking properly.  There’s a bit of trust.”

I nodded.  “Yep.”

“For what it’s worth,” Sveta said, “that trust means that much like Mrs. Yamada I do believe Victoria when she says she’s worried or she thinks this could go badly.  I know she knows stuff.  But I do want this.  I want to stand on my own two feet.  Sorry.  I think the ones who’ve been quiet up until now should say stuff.  Ashley, Chris, Kenzie, Rain.  Or, you know, maybe Victoria has more to say.”

“Thank you for coming, by the way, Victoria,” Kenzie said.

“You’re welcome,” I said.  “I do want this to be a chance to share what I know and for you guys to gain, if that’s possible.  Maybe there are places where you might realize there are gaps in your knowledge that you could then take time to brush up on.  There isn’t a rush.”

“There is, kind of,” Rain said.

Heads turned.

“I talked about this last session.  There’s currently some people after me.  I want to be part of a team because it’s backup.  Having a squad of people with me when I’m out and about would throw a wrench into their plans.  It could give me a fighting chance when I wouldn’t have one otherwise.”

“People are after you?” I asked.

Rain held up his fingers in a way that made a rectangle.  “It’s complicated.”

The rectangle was supposed to represent the card.

I smiled despite myself.  “And these guys are okay with taking the risk involved there?”

“I’m not scared,” Ashley said.

“I’m breaking my vow of silence again,” Tristan said, “But I think I’m doing it for the right reasons here.  I like, respect, and/or trust each of these guys who would be my teammates.  But in particular, I consider Rain a friend.  I’m already willing to throw my helmet into the ring and do what it takes to help save his life.  We’ve got some similar garbage going on with… people we can’t get away from, and he’s had my back in the past when it came to my issue.”

“Yes,” Rain said.  He gestured vaguely toward his head.

“People?” I asked.

“Speaking for myself, I’m part of a multitrigger cluster,” Rain said.

“Oh,” I said.  I paused, taking stock of that.  “I can see where that warrants playing the ‘complicated’ card.”

Kenzie spoke up, “Before you got in, Ashley, Victoria was saying we should all get a card saying ‘it’s complicated’ on the one side, and ‘handle with care’ on the other.  I wanted to make sure you got what they were talking about.”

“I like that,” Ashley said.  “It could use rewording.  ‘Do not fuck with’, instead of handling with care.”

“Reminds me of the old wiki entries,” Capricorn said, “The red warning boxes for the scary capes.”

“Did I have one?” Ashley asked.

“You did,” I said.

Ashley nodded.  “Good.”

Was it?  I decided to leave it alone.

“You were motioning toward your head before,” I said, to Rain.  “Are you referring to bleed-over, kiss and kill?  That sort of thing?”

“Huh,” Rain said.  “You weren’t lying when you were saying you’d studied up.”

I’d pulled my hand away from Sveta’s at one point, and I only realized it because she reached out and took my hand again, placing her hand over mine and giving it a congratulatory squeeze.

“Is it part of it?” I asked.

“I don’t know, honest to God,” Rain said.  “When I’m vague and I’m saying it’s complicated, it’s really because I can’t give a one hundred percent clear answer.  I’m still figuring out the rules this works by.  I’ve wondered about the bleeding through.  My personality changed after, but I don’t know how much of that is them and how much is how a trigger event is a wake-up call.”

“We like to give things hard labels, but sometimes they’re blurry around the edges,” I said.

Rain nodded.

“If your own cluster is coming after you, I’d say you could chalk it up to kiss and kill.  Again, blurry, might as well throw it in that bucket.”

“I won’t object,” Rain said.

“And while I’m on that subject, I’d feel compelled to stress that the term uses the word ‘kill’ for a reason.”

“Yeah,” Rain said.

“People die.  Friends of people die.  I’m still figuring out what you guys are doing, but… you want to bring kids into that?” I asked.  I looked over to my right, at Kenzie and Chris.

“Definitely not,” Rain said.  “Tristan is saying he’d help, Ashley is offering a hand, and Sveta might do what she can?  That’s a hell of a lot better, compared to the same circumstance with me alone.”

“There’s more peace of mind in talking to legitimate authorities,” I said.

“There is,” Rain said.  “If things get bad, I’ll go to them.  I’ve tested the waters and asked questions.  It doesn’t seem like they’ll offer help against a nebulous threat with an unclear window of time where it might occur, and villains  I don’t know the names, locations or details of.  It’s more like they want me to call them when I’ve got a claw at my throat.”

“Everyone’s busy,” Tristan said.

“Claw?” I asked.  “Tinker claw?”

That got the room’s attention.

“You’re thinking of the man with the tinker arms you ran into at the community center, Victoria?” Mrs. Yamada asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

She explained, “Victoria mentioned that she took him for a multi-trigger, given the powers he displayed and the common links to a woman with claws she’d read about.  I was going to bring it up at the end of the session, to avoid the lengthy digression like we had last session, and I hoped to extend it to a discussion in another venue, possibly with less people.”

“I derailed us early, it seems,” I said.

“You ran into a member of my cluster?” Rain asked.

“Big guy, beard, heavy coat.”

“Long hair, hood, rough voice,” Rain said, “And a glare, like if looks could kill.”

“No hood, glare… I don’t know.  He wore a mask with a built in glare, but he seemed like the scowly type.  Definitely on the voice.”

“Of course,” Rain said.  “When did you fight him?”

“When?” I asked.  “Um.  Thirteen days ago.  First Monday of September.  High school had just started.”

Rain held up one hand, counting on his fingers, his lips moving.

“Why?” I asked.

“Timing matters.”  It was Tristan who had replied, while Rain was busy counting.

“He was strong then,” Rain said, finishing his counting and dropping his hands.

“He was a bit of a bastard, if I’m being honest,” I said.  “Not fun to go up against.  He’s one of the ones who was after you?”

Rain nodded.

“Why the counting?”

“It’s complicated,” Rain said.  He must have seen the look on my face, because he added, “The powers wax, wane, and shuffle around.  I try to keep track.  He was loaded to bear on that day, if I’m remembering right.  The only power he didn’t have a lot of was mine, and maybe a little bit less of his own.”

“Right,” I said.  “Which is yours?”

“Uh.  Mine is a blaster power,” Rain said.  “It’s pretty mediocre.  I shoot things or people and they’re vulnerable to being broken for a short while after.  To put it simply.”

“Mediocre is sort of the name of the game when it comes to clusters,” I said.

“I’ve got a tinker power, I make extra arms and hands.  They’re not very good.  Barely above what I’d be able to make on my own, fragile enough that if you grab something wrong they can break, no strength, ugly.  The prosthetic focus is part of why I was introduced to the group, I think.”

“It was,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “We thought there was a chance of insights across designs.”

Sveta would be one, obviously.  Ashley raised a hand, slender, with black-painted nails.

I couldn’t tell that her hand was prosthetic.

“I wasn’t much help, because I’m a really bad tinker,”  Rain said.  “I can also catch my balance or secure my footing more easily, that’s my version of the big guy’s mover power.  It’s handy in a way, lets me turn on a dime or keep from falling over.”

“Wait, his power was the mover power?  The arms and emotion power were his secondaries?” I asked.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Rain said.  “I think he had a bit less of his own power that day, with the way it was sorted.  My last power is an emotion power.  Guilt and doubt, over an area.  It’s pretty tepid.”

“He hit me with it a few times,” Tristan said.  “Tepid is a good word for it.  You can actually not notice you’re being hit by it.”

“And it waxes and wanes, you said?” I asked.

“My blaster power can get a bump some days.  My others, no.  They stay at about that power level.  The others change it up more, they’ll act on days they’re strong.”

“We may be getting distracted,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “I might suggest you carry on this discussion later.  Victoria can fill you in on…”

“Snag,” I said.  “Sorry.  This is actually really interesting though.  I’d be happy to talk it over another time.”

“It’s good to have a name for him,” Rain said.  “Uh, okay.  Getting back on topic, I know I’m a little selfish in why I’m doing this.  Wanting people to have my back.”

“We all need people to have our backs,” Kenzie said.

“Yeah,” Rain said.  “It’s still selfish.  It’s messy and I’m not sure I can pull my own weight with all of this.  I do want to help people though.  I’ve been selfish for a long time.  I’m trying to be better.  I know I’m contradicting myself in what I’m doing here, but it makes sense to me, and so few things do.”

“You said-” Kenzie started.  “Oh, are you done, Rain?”

“I’m done.  Pretty much where I’m at.  I’ll buy you a coffee or whatever you drink, Victoria, if you’ll tell me about Snag.”

“Sure.”

“You said you had info about hero teams, Victoria,” Kenzie said.  “And I’m interested in that because I do want to try to be a hero first.”

“First?” I asked.

“I’m saying I’ll try, maybe a few times, and if it doesn’t work out I’ll try other things but if it doesn’t work out then I might try being a mercenary, or a villain.”

“You would be terrifying as shit if you were a villain,” Chris said.

“Would I?  Is that a compliment?” Kenzie asked.

“Yes,” Ashley said.

“No,” Chris said.  “It’s a neutral fact, and I don’t use the word terrifying lightly.”

“Be fair, Chris,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“I’m being fair.  This is an objective fact,” Chris said.

“And be gentle, too.  If you must levy a criticism-”

“Fact.”

“-there are nicer ways to say it.”

“Got it,” Chris said.

Kenzie stuck out her tongue at him.

“Terrifying is good,” Ashley said.  “Terrifying slows the other guy down.  It makes them make mistakes.”

“You’re not wrong,” I said.  “I’ve used that to my advantage-”

“And it’s fun,” Ashley said.

“Ah… I used to think that,” I said.  “I’ve come to reconsider that sentiment.  I regret how I employed it, a little, and I regret enjoying it a lot.”

Ashley sighed a little.

“We’ve talked about this at some length,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “Here in the group.  The approaches that work.  Fear comes at a cost.”

“It does,” I said.  “Not necessarily in the ways you’d expect, pushing people away or any of that.  It makes a mess.  It makes people unpredictable.  I have an awe-fear aura so I’ve seen this at work.”

“I almost envy you,” Ashley said.  “To have something you can so casually employ.”

“It’s not casual,” I said.  “Because like I said, it’s complicated in terms of the mess it makes of things.  I’ve been trying to be more deliberate about how I use it.”

“See, this excites me,” Kenzie said.  “I want to learn from Ashley because I saw the camcorder footage from the Boston Games- I showed you that one right, Ashley?”

“You did,” Ashley said.

“I’ll get you a copy because you liked it so much.  There’s also a video I don’t think I’ve shown you but it’s mostly you walking through a club with someone and everyone gets out of your way.  That was interesting.”

“Do you want people to get out of your way, Kenzie?” Sveta asked.  “I don’t think it’s good or fun.”

“Definitely no.  It’s still interesting.  But, um, I also want to learn from Victoria because I do want to be on a team, I want to be on this team of course, but whatever happens I want to be on some team.  Then I want to be useful so I stay there.  The more I know the more useful I can be.”

“I am interested in hearing it too,” Sveta said.  “About teams, making heroics work.”

“I looked over my schoolwork and some old projects before I came today,” I said.  “I typed up some bullet points and thought hard about what I wanted to say, and… being here, I’m not sure it’s valid.”

“It’s valid.  I want to hear it,” Kenzie said.

“I would too,” Ashley said.  “It’s why I’m here.”

I was caught a little off guard by that.

I could remember Ashley’s comments when the topic of the cards had come up.  She’d liked the ‘handle with care’ aspect of it, which was illuminating in its own way.  More specifically, she’d liked it while interpreting it as a ‘do not fuck with’ license.

The way it had been framed and what I knew of Ashley and Damsel of Distress made me imagine it as a ‘warning: volatile’ label on her breast, worn much like a nametag.

She’d reacted to me belittling her even in a small way, earlier, when I’d reduced her to a pin on a map.

“It might be worth saying why you think it isn’t valid,” Mrs. Yamada suggested.

I tried to find the words to articulate what I wanted to say without getting on anyone’s bad side, my fingers twirling a lock of hair while I looked down at the floor.  I looked up and looked her in the eyes, then looked at everyone else as I said, “I can come here and I can say, alright, finances.  Being a hero team is tough financially.  I touched on this before.  How do you get funding, one source, many, or is it institutional?  What’s your budget, what can you expect to pay, where are the hidden costs, like medical or needing a headquarters, and what are the potential costs or risks if you decide to save money by trimming the budget somewhere?  And maybe that angle works for some of you.”

“It feels abstract,” Sveta said.  “I have a stipend, I pay rent, I have to budget, but when you talk about things in the big picture like that, I find it hard to imagine.”

“Budgets and money make more sense when you root them in tangible things that are relevant to you.  If you had questions about one area, I might have more to say about it, or I could expand on the idea, if that was a thing that worked for you guys, as a way to wrap your head around what you’re trying to do.  I could do the same for objectives and goals, information gathering, costumes and presentation, allegiances and direction, liaisons, territories, methodology… one or two others I’m not remembering off the top of my head.  But as far as I can tell, you’re approaching this from several different directions, with very different priorities.”

“We definitely are,” Rain said.

“I don’t get the impression Ashley is prioritizing developing herself as a person, becoming independent, or catching up in life, like Sveta is.  I don’t get the impression its about becoming less selfish or wanting or needing backup, like Rain.  I’m not sure what someone of your pedigree would be doing here, Ashley.”

“Pedigree?” Ashley asked.

“It means aristocratic background when used to describe humans,” Chris said.  “She’s not calling you a bred animal.  I’m pretty sure.”

“I’m not bothered.  I like the word choice,” Ashley said.  She had half of a smile on her face.

“It was picked to be liked,” I said.

“I’m here to learn, Victoria,” Ashley said.  Her gaze with the narrow pupils and lack of irises was intense.

“That’s positive,” I said.

“No it’s not,” Chris said.

“I’m here to learn how heroes operate, so I can be more effective against them when I return to being a villain,” Ashley said.

I looked at Sveta and Tristan, then at Mrs. Yamada.

“She’s not lying,” Tristan said.

“It’s positive, really,” Sveta said.  “She’s agreed to stick with us until we crash and burn.”

“Until you fail,” Ashley said.

“Until we crash and burn,” Sveta said.  “We went over this.  If you leave at the first sign of failure then you’ll be gone in the first week and you won’t have learned anything, and everyone loses.”

“Irritating,” Ashley said.

“Reality is irritating,” Rain said.

“We’re low-key confident we can get her to stick around on the side of the good guys, with sufficient friendship, ass-kicking of our opponents, and time to convince her of the upsides,” Tristan said, to me.

“You vastly underestimate how much I enjoy being a villain, Tristan.”

“You enjoy being a villain but you don’t like the life that comes with it,” Rain said.

“It had its merits,” Ashley said.

“Sure,” Rain said.  “And a lot of other misery besides that.”

Ashley sighed.  “I’ve already agreed.  I’ll join you.  I’ll defend you from your cluster.  In exchange I learn about heroes, I get information about the cape scene, and I may get training.  If it fails, I’ll go back to what I know and enjoy.  You’ll have your chance to convince me that being a hero is great.  I doubt you’ll succeed.  Most heroes I’ve met have been imbeciles and nuisances.”

“Okay,” I said.  I put a hand to my forehead, closing my eyes.  Capes were so damn weird sometimes.

“You said it was better than the alternative, before everyone arrived,” Kenzie said.  “Being a hero.”

“I did,” I said.  I might be regretting saying that now.  The fact that Kenzie paid attention to what I’d said and was quick enough to bring out the salient points was good, objectively, but it was kind of a pain here.  I could see where some of Mrs. Yamada’s worries were rooted, here.  “You have a strong drive to learn, then, Ashley?”

“What I want hasn’t changed.  I want to be on top.  I want to destroy my enemies and give potential enemies a reason to fear me.  I’m going to do it right this time.”

This time.  There were four different things I wanted to reply to there, and I settled on the easy one.  “Reports were that you died.”

“I did,” she said.  “Now I’m back.  My power isn’t holding me back anymore.”

“You get sparky sometimes,” Kenzie said.

“So long as my hands are maintained, I’m fine.  I have contacts.  I’m eating well, I’m sleeping, I’m studying and I’m training.  I’ll do it right this time.  I won’t die this time.”

“Alright,” I said.  “That pretty much sums up what I’m trying to say here.  You guys have your reasons.  I can’t show you a spreadsheet or make a list that meets your needs because your needs are diverse.  It’s not about hard stats like dollars and viewership.”

“It’s about dollars for me,” Tristan said.

“Right.  I’ll note you do have a very different idea than I do about how much money there may be,” I said.

“Kind of,” Tristan said.  “I don’t know if it’s that different.”

The thing I wanted to say that I couldn’t without offending people was that a lot of them were coming at things from an irrational or emotional perspective, from their self, and not from logic.  To challenge Sveta’s approach on this was to challenge the woman she wanted to be.  Challenging Rain meant putting his mortality at risk.  Damsel was too volatile to push too hard, she had her motivations, and I couldn’t imagine scaring her off would do any good to anyone.  The team would go forward without her, dejected and possibly upset with me or with Mrs. Yamada for inviting me.

My impression was that Tristan was looking at the money from an abstract, emotional perspective as well.

“I barely have a high school education, it’s not like there’s a lot out there for me, and money is tight everywhere,” Tristan said.  “I like the hero stuff.  I like the notoriety, and I like being out there.  We need a fix, and the two ways I see of us getting one would be if we get the money together to pay the right cape, or we chance into meeting the right cape.”

“Fix?” I asked.  “Sorry, I missed something.”

“With how quick you were about cape terms and names, and how you knew Reach, I thought you might have realized.”

“I figured out you’re Capricorn.”

“More to it than that.  You know how two brothers can get in a pissy fight over who gets to have the remote and decide what to watch on TV?  We’re stuck doing that, except it’s way more fucking intense.”

Two brothers and one power?  Or-

Oh, I was an idiot.

“That we are,” Tristan said.

We.  “You’re a case seventy?”

“I can’t tell you how bummed I am that it isn’t case sixty-nine instead, but no, that number went to a bigfoot sighting or something stupid.  A stupid bit of immature humor would’ve been the one good thing in this mess of a thing.”

“Case seventies in North America included Knot, Tandem, Zigzag was one, I think, there was House of Three in Quebec.  And… you, it seems.”

“One or two of them might not be seventies, but they get called seventies because they’re close enough.  Blurred lines, like you said.  When twins trigger, the powers are identical or nearly identical.  When twins trigger and they’re touching one another, like you said to Rain, things get blurry, the agent is too stupid or careless to tell where one starts and the other ends, or it wants to fuck with us, and it jams everything in together.  Two minds, two similar powers, and one body to be shared.”

“Is he asleep?” I asked.

“No.  He’s in here, he’s watching and listening.  He sleeps when I sleep, or I sleep when he sleeps, if he’s in the driver’s seat.  We trade out for two hour shifts.”

“Can he communicate?” I asked.  “Talk to you while it’s your turn?”

“That would be too easy,” Tristan said.  His good humor was gone now.  He just looked sad.  “No.”

No.

Two brothers, and only one of them could be interacting with the world at a time.  For the other, it was- picturing it made me think of being in the hospital again.  Being stuck, immobile, locked in while the world went on around them.

Oppressive, that kind of thinking.  Just as oppressive to be living it.

“I like Byron,” Kenzie said.  “I really wish he would stay for the therapy sessions.”

“I like him too,” Rain said.  He leaned back in his chair, hands at his hair, pushing it away from his face as he stretched.  “I don’t like talking about you like you’re not here, Byron.  We’ll hang out later, okay?  Unwind.”

“It’s been a long and rocky road,” Tristan said, to me.  “He’s not interested in the hero thing either.  He’s on Mrs. Yamada’s side here.  On yours, kind of, Victoria.”

On my side?  I was trying to frame my argument, but it was an uphill battle for logic to win against the heart, and it did seem like their hearts were in this, to varying degrees.

I decided to say as much.

“I might not be winning any points with Mrs. Yamada in this,” I said.  “And I don’t know enough about your individual situations, but you have personal, thought out reasons for wanting to do this.  At this stage, I’m not telling you guys you shouldn’t do this.  I’m definitely, definitely not saying you should.  I think there are a few things to work out.  I’m honestly really concerned about Ashley.”

“As anyone should be,” Ashley said.

“That would be why I’m concerned.  I don’t know if you guys want to sit down as a group at a cafe or something, hammer out some basic plans.  You’d probably want something like an outline or playbook that you can take with you when you’re talking to the Wardens or whoever’s managing the territory closest to you.  I think the hero teams are covering different sections of the city, and you wouldn’t want to step on jurisdictional toes.  If you want to do this.”

“That could be great,” Sveta said.

Kenzie nodded, very enthusiastically, as in most things.

“Chris and Kenzie,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “You’ve been quiet.”

“I’ve talked about wanting to pick Victoria’s brain and she listed some topics,” Kenzie said.  “I like this whole conversation as a recap, seeing where everyone’s at, instead of trying to think back to previous sessions and think about what people’s reasons are.  I’m glad we’re talking like this and I want to have that meeting and figure things out.”

“Chris?”  Mrs. Yamada prodded.

“Can I just say I don’t want to share with the guest here?”

“You can,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “Is it the truth?”

Chris looked annoyed as he looked at her.  “I don’t like talking about stuff.  Digging into my thoughts for answers stresses me out and throws me more out of whack than it helps.”

“You can’t exist purely on the surface level,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“I can.  It might or might not be good for me, but something that could be good or could be bad is a lot better than no-win after no-win.”

“No win?” I asked.

“I could say it’s none of your business,” Chris said.

“You could,” I said.  “It’s your right.”

“I don’t see why you’re as defensive as you are,” Sveta said.

“I’m playing defense because paranoia is the only way to survive,” Chris said.  He reached up to adjust his headphones, wincing mid-adjustment.  “How many sessions did it take before I gave you all the basics?”

“Four or five,” Kenzie said.

“Well, this is session one with the new person,” Chris said.  “If you want to drop me from the team because I’m not okay with that, fine.  I’ll figure something else out.”

“Nobody is saying that,” Sveta said.  “You’ve come this far with us, don’t get shy now.”

“I’m not shy, I’m suspicious.  That won’t change,” Chris said.  He sounded irritated, in a way his expression didn’t convey effectively.

“Okay,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “I don’t think pressuring Chris will help anything.  Again, however, I would really urge everyone present to periodically take stock.  Pay attention to what you’re feeling, imagine this dialogue extrapolated out to a greater, higher-stakes situation.  How will you handle your feelings, and will you feel have both a voice and the ability to affect the changes you need?”

“You’re worried we’ll get railroaded,” Rain said.

“I’m worried about a number of things, Rain.  I wish you would be willing to put things off for six months or a year, maintain contact, see how you get along as simple friends and acquaintances, let the ties solidify or break as they will, and then move forward if it is what you still want.”

“There are a lot of issues to hammer out,” I said.  “You’re coming at this from so many different directions… how do you even get started in terms of the kind of team you end up being?  In other things?  I’d join my voice to Mrs. Yamada’s and urge you to take your time.”

“Like I said, I’m feeling the pressure,” Rain said.  “My cluster is homing in on me.”

“I can talk to people, if you want.  If you need another cape to back you up, I might be able to help.”

“I mean, that sounds nice,” Rain said.  “But I can’t help but lie in bed some mornings, wondering if this is the day.  If, in the next twenty-four hours, the other three members of my cluster come after me in an organized way, with a lot of money and a lot of resources poured into things.  When I see it playing out in my head, I know they’re organized, and I worry we’re not.  If we’re part of a team, if we’re training, coordinating, then maybe we can work together in an organized way too.”

“There’s a lot that goes into making a team.  You can stay together and watch Rain’s back, meet, talk, and plan.”

“Without getting the practice in?” Tristan asked.  “Sorry to butt in again, but it takes time to learn how to work with teammates.  Some more than  others.”

“What you’re wanting to do on the heroism front is hard enough without added complications.  It’s a bad, bad climate for heroes to try to get started.  That could end up being more distraction than the training is a boon.”

“Imagine how bad the climate would be if nobody new got started,” Tristan said.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I won’t deny that.  I just- I have serious reservations, but I also recognize I probably won’t be changing any minds.  Instead of trying to get you to reverse course or stop, I’m saying maybe change trajectories a bit.  Go slow, focus on what needs to be focused on, instead of getting distracted with the many, many side things that go into getting a proper team started.”

“Focusing on keeping Rain safe, as the priority thing?” Sveta asked.

“Yeah,” I said.  “I can meet you guys at a coffee shop or somewhere, we can make it a regular thing.  I can back you up, I might be able to introduce you to people, and we do what Mrs. Yamada suggested, and take months or a year to get a really good game plan put together.”

“You’re committing to a lot, Victoria,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “It won’t conflict with your other plans?”

“I like doing this sort of thing.  I’ll find a way to work it in.  It gives me an opportunity to stay in touch with Sveta, too.”

I was elbowed, hard, from my left.

“If you think I’m letting you drift away or lose touch now then you need a reality check,” Sveta said.

“Wasn’t planning on it, don’t worry,” I said.

“I don’t like it,” Kenzie said.

It was an abrupt statement, cutting into the dialogue, the serious tone different from the easy back-and-forth.

“We wouldn’t be leaving you out,” Sveta said.  “You said you were interested in what Victoria knew about heroes, and you’d be part of the team when we got started.”

“No I wouldn’t,” Kenzie said.  “Because you all would be doing what you have to do to help Rain, and I’d be on the sidelines.  You said you don’t want to have a kid there in a dangerous situation, so I wouldn’t actually be there when things went down.  And if you thought there would be an attack soon you wouldn’t want me hanging around in case I got caught up in it, so you’d all meet and I’d stay home then, too.”

“It could be over in a couple of weeks,” Rain said.

“It could not be over, too,” Kenzie said.  She smiled.  “Come on.  I’ve done this before.  Again and again.  I did it during the leadership camps and the exercises in San Diego.  I did it during the branding in LA and I kind of did it with the Baltimore Wards.”

“Did what?” I asked.

“Got left behind.  Or sidelined and ignored.  The reasons were good, or maybe I’m a stupid, gullible idiot and the reasons are bad, and I believed them anyway.”

“I liked your contributions to the group, I’d want you to stick around,” I said.

“I know you mean well, Victoria, but this is the way it always goes,” Kenzie said.  She shrugged.  “The compliments, the softening of the blow.  I think you’re nice and you’re trying to do the right thing.  But again and again, because I’m a kid, or because I’m small and weak, or because I’m a girl, or because I’m black, or because I have school, or because I’m vulnerable, or I’m annoying, or because they want to be careful around me because I have problems, or because I’ve said the wrong things because I’m an idiot a lot of the time, or because- because whatever the reason, good or bad, hateful or kind…”

She trailed off there.  She was staring down at the ground, head down where I couldn’t see it.  She huffed out out a small laugh.

Her hands were on either side of her hips, gripping the sides of the plastic chair.

“Articulate what you want, Kenzie,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “Assertive.  Not passive, not passive-aggressive.”

“I don’t want to be left behind,” Kenzie said.  She was speaking more slowly, deliberately.  A dramatic change of pace from her usual output.  “I’m experienced in this, so when I say I think I see things going this way, it would be nice if people believed me.”

“More assertive, Kenzie,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“Trust me,” Kenzie said, with emphasis.  She looked up, flashed a smile at me, then shrugged.  “You say you’re experienced in cape stuff and I think it shows and that’s amazing.  I’m experienced in this and I’m really tired of this song and dance.”

“I understand,” I said.  “I’m sorry to have touched on something that sensitive.  I should have been more considerate.”

“It’s not you,” she said.  “It’s me.  It’s a regular thing.  I don’t blame you.  It’s the way I am, it makes people act this way around me.  And-”

She drew in a deep breath.

“-And I would like to be included from the beginning, in a way where I’m useful and participating and I’m not watching from the sidelines.  I would like to do the team thing from the beginning.  I don’t mind if it’s small or slow but I want to do something with progress.  Or if not that, then tell me upfront so I can have my feelings hurt now right away instead of over a long time.”

“This is really important to you,” I said.

“There have only ever been three times in my life where people acted like they wanted me around.  Not counting the adults who get paid to look after me, sorry Mrs. Yamada.  The first one, it led to my trigger, so you can imagine how well that went.  The second one was the couple of months I spent with the Baltimore Wards, and they don’t want anything to do with me anymore.  The third is here.  These guys.”

“Well gee whiz, Kenzie,” Tristan said.

She smiled, “Sorry.”

“I like to win my arguments, but you can’t bring that kind of weaponry to bear.  It’s just not fair on those guys.”

Kenzie smiled again.

“I’m glad you like us,” Sveta said.  “I do want to include you, and I hope this thing works out the way you want it to.”

“We’ll figure something out,” I said.

“We?” Ashley asked.

“I was going to say,” Chris said.

“I’m not trying to step on your toes or insinuate myself into things,” I said.  “But if you’ll have me, maybe I could take on a role as coach or something.  If you really want to do this-”

I could see the looks on their faces.  Yeah, they wanted to do this.

“-Then maybe we avoid having you guys go from a mediated discussion in a controlled environment like this to… something more loosely supervised and managed, for the mediation part of things, and we look for a shallower pool to dive into instead, where you can get started in some capacity sooner, we ensure everyone has something to do, but we keep it manageable and small.”

“You’re volunteering?” Tristan asked.

“If Mrs. Yamada is okay with this idea.  I don’t see you guys changing your minds, so…”

“It would bring me some peace of mind,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“Mediated,” Rain said.  “You’d be babysitting us?”

“Coaching, giving direction if it’s lacking, give you someone to turn to if you need someone to help resolve a dispute.  I can’t promise you full time hours, it’d be a secondary or minor thing for me, but… I’m trying to think of a good way to tackle this and this is the best idea I’ve got.”

“Yes,” Kenzie said.  “I want to hear more about the heroing stuff.”

“I wouldn’t object,” Ashley said.

“And the shallow end?” Tristan asked.

“We’ll figure something out,” I said.  “I’m thinking of a couple of possible places, we could put feelers out in one that’s close enough for everyone here to get to.  A few of these places have small populations of B-listers, and I think it would be a good, easy place to learn the ropes.”

“I felt energized after,” I said.

“Can you elaborate on that?” Mrs. Yamada asked.

“My cousin remarked I looked better, more in touch with the world.  Normally, I get these intrusive… non-thoughts.”

“Non-thoughts?” Rain asked.

“Like, not intrusive thoughts, not ideas that I can’t get out of my head, but my mind has these places it tries to go, and I reflexively shut them out.  Like, one thing, I spent two years in the hospital and in the care home, obsessing,” I said.

“I know what you’re talking about,” Sveta said.

“Yeah. And I feel like I’ve devoted enough thought to that.  Two years of time, more than a lifetime’s worth.  So I lock up, mentally, or trip over the subject.  I get that a lot as my mood gets worse.  I have it for things I do, like using my powers.  I had it a lot less after the day at the hospital.”

“Some people have physiological signs, feeling ill, headaches, breathing, when they’re trying to find an outlet for things they can’t otherwise express,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “Others have habits, things or people they go back to, they could have needs or cravings.”

“What if the thing you turn to is also the thing that causes stress?” Kenzie asked.

“That is absolutely a thing that happens, Kenzie.  It’s at the root of downward spirals like addiction or overeating.  On a more subtle level, something like a panic disorder can self-reinforce because the panic provides relief, even as it makes the actual situations worse.  I like that Victoria identified something that arrests or controls the downward spiral.”

“It’s the sort of thing I plan to do again,” I said.  “Putting all the other stuff aside, distilling things down to the most basic route of helping people, in a way that’s good and healthy for me, too.  Or-”

Mrs. Yamada had started speaking at the same time I added the ‘or’.  We both stopped.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“Or where there’s bad, the good is enough to outweigh that bad and leave me better off,” I said.  I shrugged.

“Here in the group, we often discuss the issues we’re facing, how we relate to what others bring up, and we talk about solutions.  I’ll periodically try to turn things to more positive topics, but with six people here, it’s common for people to come to the session with something they want to delve into.

“I like that you’re dwelling on the good things, Victoria, and that you’re giving me an excuse to turn things toward a better note as we wrap up.  Does anyone else have something to share?”

Tristan raised one hand a little, and Mrs. Yamada nodded, giving him permission to say.

“It’s not positive,” he said.  “I don’t know if that’s alright.”

“It’s fine.  Go ahead.”

“What Victoria was saying, how she was saying she was happy, seeing the kids happy, and how she felt energized after.  I don’t have that.  I don’t have a way to recharge when I’m not at one hundred percent.”

“You definitely have things you’re passionate about,” Rain said.

“I like people, parties, noise, really letting the walls drop away and having fun.  There are things I’d want to go out and do which I can’t.  Things I’m not comfortable talking about with Kenzie present.”

Kenzie smiled at him.  “Rude stuff.  I’m not that young.”

“I know you probably know, I’m still not comfortable talking about it like this,” Tristan said.

“You say Kenzie but you don’t even mention me,” Chris said.  “I’m perversely pleased by that.  You mean fucking, right?”

“Please, Chris,” Mrs. Yamada said.

“I mean stuff,” Tristan said, “Stuff I can’t do because of my situation.  I did some of it back before the trigger.  More like sophomore high schoolers stealing their parents booze and having way too many people in a house while the parents are away, but that was the time of my life.  It was when I was the most excited to be on this- on that planet.  Now I can’t do stuff like that, the pressure release valve is screwed up for the same reasons I’m screwed up.”

“The case seventy stuff,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.  “Now me passing out drunk might mean I screw up the time window for passing back control, however many alarms I set, and I can’t do that to Byron.  I can’t go have a one night stand because the way things are mean I’d be involving him in it as a bystander or voyeur.”

“Can you find new outlets?” Sveta asked.  “One thing I’ve learned over the past little while is that I still had a lot of growing to do.  It’s easy when you’re in a bad place to think ‘this is it, this is me,’ but there’s always more out there.”

“I’m trying,” Tristan said.  “But it sucks to know that the stuff I want to do and the people I want to do are out there and I can’t do that.  I know it’s the same for Byron.  It’s different for him, though, because he’s a quiet guy, he wants to take it easy, but you get the weird conflict where you want to chill out but you can’t because you also want to maximize your use of time, when you only get to live half your life.”

“I’d like to talk about that at a later point, when we’re not a minute away from wrapping up,” Mrs. Yamada said.  “I’d also like to have a word with Byron and you after the session, make sure everything’s okay.”

“Sure,” Tristan said.

“On a positive note, if nobody minds,” Sveta said, sitting up with the faintest of metal-on-metal sounds.  “I got to recharge too, but it was a big one.”

“Your trip?” Kenzie asked.

“I know we talked about it last week, but we mostly talked about Rain staying safe and the hero team thing.  It wasn’t a little pick me up.  It was big, and I really want to find the chances to go and do stuff like that again.”

“Traveling?” I asked.  Her smile was contagious.

“Traveling.  We had a boat, and when we weren’t around people, I got out of my hamster ball.  We stayed pretty close to the coasts, Weld sailing or driving the boat and me swimming.  It was really, really nice.”

“I can tell you got a lot of sun,” Tristan said.

Sveta smiled.  Her face was so pale that her complexion was borderline impossible for a human.  “I like swimming.  I want to find a way to get out and do it more.  It’s the first time I can remember moving and having there be resistance.  Everything else is too hard or too reflex.”

“Anyone else?” Mrs. Yamada asked.  “Final words?  Thoughts?”

“I’m glad you had a good time,” Kenzie said.

“I really did,” Sveta said.

There was a pause.  No responses, the only sound was a clack as the wind blew the blinds away from the window and they swung back into position.  I wondered how bad the rain was.

Mrs. Yamada looked up at the clock, then said, “Then we should wrap up.  Tristan, a word.  Everyone else, have a good week.  There won’t be a Friday meeting this week, so I will see you next Tuesday.”

“I’d like to exchange people’s contact information, if it’s okay,” I said.  “If you’re wanting to do this.”

“You keep saying that like you’re hoping we won’t,” Ashley said.

“It might make things simpler,” I said.

“The others have my number,” she said.  “I don’t keep track of it.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Do you guys mind giving Victoria my number while you’re at it?” Tristan asked.

“Can do,” Rain said.

People were standing, now.  Tristan gave Sveta a hand in getting to her feet.

The group, Tristan excepted, filed out into the hallway.  A few people had coats draped or hooked on the the stacked plastic chairs along the hallway’s length.  I’d left my bag on the ground.  I pulled my phone out before I slung it over one shoulder.

A message from Crystal, asking if I was coming home for dinner.

“Pass me your number?” Rain asked.  His phone was as battered as he was, with a crack running down the case.

I thumbed through the concentric rings, put my thumb on my phone number and profile information, and then flicked it in Rain’s direction.

“Got it,” he said.

His info appeared on my phone, at the top edge.  It was soon joined by Tristan’s, then Kenzie’s and Ashley’s, near simultaneously.  Kenzie’s name was framed with colorful symbols.  Chris’s and Sveta’s were the last to appear.

Rain had handled sending me Sveta’s, Ashley’s and Tristan’s, it seemed.  Ashley was pulling on a raincoat, and Sveta’s hands were clasped in front of her.

Sveta might have sent me hers without using her hands, now that I thought about it.  It was possible she had a phone in her suit.

I glanced back into the room, to see if Mrs. Yamada had anything she wanted to convey with a look or gesture.  Instead, I saw her talking to someone who wasn’t Tristan.

Byron had black hair, shorter than Tristan’s, slicked back with something that shone in the room’s lights.  He wore a jacket, a black v-neck shirt, and jeans.  The contrast between him and Tristan in everything but facial features were striking- Tristan had been bright haired, his top and shorts all about contrasts with light and dark, color and lack thereof.  He’d brimmed with confidence.

Byron didn’t.  He looked distinctly uncomfortable, his hands in his jacket pockets, shoulders forward, a look of concern on his face.  The muted gray-blue of his jacket, the black v-neck shirt, the jeans, there weren’t any of the intentional contrasts I’d seen in Tristan.

“Are we going to wait for Tristan and try to have a quick chat about things?” Rain asked.

“I have dinner,” Kenzie said.  She looked at me.  “I try to have dinner with my parents every night.  We’re trying to reinforce that normalcy.”

“Is that going alright?” Sveta asked.

“It’s going,” Kenzie said.  She smiled.  “Which is better than the alternative.”

“I’m all people’d out,” Chris said.  “Most of you guys are better than some, but I’m done for now.”

“That’s a good enough reason to put it off, then,” Rain said.  He gripped the doorframe, leaning into the room a little.  I heard Mrs. Yamada’s voice stop.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Wanted to let Tristan and Byron know we’re heading out.  We’re not meeting today.”

“Okay,” Byron said.  “He’ll have heard you.”

He sounded different, even.  Quieter, in the way people talked if they were sure they’d be heard regardless, if they didn’t care, or, on the other side of things if they knew they wouldn’t be listened to.

“We’ll hang out,” Rain said.  “You and me, we’ll do something soon.”

“Okay.  How’s Erin?”

“She’s good,” Rain said.  “I could invite her to come with.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“Yeah, for sure,” Rain said.

Rain was still smiling when he stepped away from the door.

“Let’s go,” Rain said.

I had to pause as Kenzie and Chris got out of my way and turned to head down the hallway, while Rain and Ashley led the way.  I didn’t catch Ashley and Rain’s brief exchange of words.

I glanced back at the room, and saw Byron was looking at me while he was saying something to Mrs. Yamada.  The up-down look, followed by the quick glance away when he realized I’d seen him.

You’re too young for me and you’re not my type, based on what little I’ve seen and heard, I thought.

Sveta took my arm, squeezing it.  My reminder to focus on the others.

“You’re okay,” Sveta said, squeezing harder for a moment.  “You can talk.”

“You seem to be doing okay yourself,” I said.

“I’m great,” she said.  “Today was a good day.”

We walked to catch up, and I could feel Sveta periodically leaning harder on me as she worked to maintain her stride.  For all that she was in there, no doubt pulling on multiple components and relying on intricate machinery, she managed pretty darn well.

A little less so on the stairs to the ground floor, but I gave her my arm and plenty of support, and she did okay.

She hugged me with enthusiasm as we walked the five feet from the stairs to the side door, where the others were waiting under the rectangle of roof that jutted out from the side of the boxy building.

“I’m going,” Chris said.  “Bye.”

“Bye,” Sveta said, amid a few other scattered responses.  I raised one hand in a token wave.

Chris removed his headphones as he walked away, stowing them in one pocket of his cargo shorts.  He didn’t use an umbrella or wear a raincoat.  He seemed content to get rained on.

Kenzie had a blue raincoat with duffle coat toggles on the front, and was standing a bit in the rain, head bent over her phone.  Ashley stood on the sidewalk, her hood up.  Rain had settled for an umbrella, but hadn’t opened it yet.

“I’m walking to the bus station in Webster,” Rain said.  “Normally Tristan, Sveta, and I walk that way.”

“I can head that way,” I said.  “I’ll walk with you guys for a bit.”

“I’ll come,” Kenzie said, not looking up from her phone.  “There’s still time before dinner.”

“You sure?” Sveta asked.

“Yep,” Kenzie looked up from her phone.

“And Ashley?” I asked.

She didn’t reply, turning away to look down the length of the road.  She turned around, looking the other way.  In that moment, a car appeared.

“I’ve got a ride,” she said.

“Spending time with the the ol’ guardians?” Sveta asked.

I didn’t miss the word choice.  The forced cavalier attitude.  Awkward.

“I try to get as many of my appointments into the same day as I can,” Ashley said.  “It’s nuisance enough to have my day disrupted with this inanity, I don’t want it taking over my weeks.”

“We’re inanity, are we?” Rain asked.

“You can be,” Ashley said.  “Checkups and tests, therapy, group therapy, being supervised without it being official supervision, interviews, prosthetics tune-ups, work.  It becomes inane.”

“It’s all for good reasons,” Sveta said.

“I’d do better without all of the distractions,” Ashley said.  She looked at me, and she did the up-down assessment too.  It was something different from what Byron had done.  “I look forward to learning what you have to teach.”

“It was nice to meet you,” I said.  I wasn’t sure if I was lying, but it seemed like the thing to say.

She walked down the little dirt path that extended through the grass from the building’s side door to the road.  A black sedan.  She opened the back door, climbed in, and closed the door with more force than was probably necessary.

“I have so many questions,” I said.

“Weld’s kind-of dad figure was the Director in charge of the Boston PRT,” Sveta said.  “He was also kind of in charge of looking after Ashley, because her town was close to Boston.”

“Making sure she didn’t do too much damage?” I asked.

“Yes.  And gradually trying to get her used to the idea of cooperating with the good guys, making sure she was staying reasonably healthy.  They reached out regularly, letting her know there were better options.  Except that Ashley was a different Ashley.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “She’s going to be on your team?”

“Yeah,” Sveta said.

I didn’t have a response for that.

She squeezed my arm.  “I spent a lot of time with a lot of people who never got a chance, Victoria.  I feel like it’s my duty to give her one.”

I drew in a deep breath, then sighed.  “I don’t disagree.”

“But you don’t wholly agree, either?” Rain asked.

“I… believe in second chances.  Not necessarily in every circumstance, though, which seems to be the direction a lot of people are going.”

“We should walk,” Rain said.  “The sooner we get where we split off in different directions, the earlier Kenzie can head back to her parents’ and make it on time for dinner.”

“Yes, please,” Kenzie said, still looking down at her phone.

Sveta had an umbrella.  I held it so Sveta could walk while leaning on me, the two of us sharing it.

There weren’t many cars on the road, and even with the overcast sky making it rather dark out for the late afternoon, there weren’t many lights on either.  The route we were walking put us on a long stretch of road with small businesses and restaurants on either side.  Most of the illumination came from store signs in bright colors that were reflected in the puddles.

“I didn’t get a great read on Chris,” I said.  “He’s the other big set of question marks.”

“I like Chris,” Kenzie said, without looking up.  “He’s crazy smart about some things and adorkably stupid about others.  He’s hard to figure out but when he lets you in it makes you feel special.”

She said something like that with no compunctions, no reservations.  I almost envied her.

Sveta reached out and placed a hand on top of Kenzie’s hood.  “It would be unfair to share Chris’ story when he didn’t want to share it himself, Victoria.  I only said what I said about Ashley because she’s open about it.”

“In fairness, I wasn’t asking or prying,” I said.  “I was remarking.”

“Remarking with a question mark at the end?” Rain asked.

“Inviting an answer, but not pressing for one,” I said.  “I can drop it.”

“Okay,” Kenzie said.  She put her phone away.  “All caught up.  Stir fry for dinner, I’m going to pick up broccoli, and my workshop is warming up for later.”

“You’ve got a workshop, like a proper tinker,” I said.

“Absolutely,” Kenzie said, dead serious.

“Are you hiding a jetpack inside that raincoat, or are those rocket boots?” I asked.

“I wish,” Kenzie said.  “I can’t do that stuff.  I make cameras and inconveniently big boxes.  My best stuff is inconveniently big, box-shaped cameras.”

“Big boxes?” I asked.

“The term in my file is emplacements.  Terminals, tech, and computers big enough they’re hard to move around.  Like turrets, but I can’t really make good weapons or defensive things.”

“I see.  I can see why Watchdog wanted you.”

“Grr, arf.”

And I might be able to see why your supervisors wanted to keep you away from the front lines.

“Out of curiosity,” I said.  “Where are people?  I’m trying to figure out where you guys are situated and what locations might work.”

“I’m from Norwalk Station,” Kenzie said.

Norwalk Station would be off to the west end of Norfair, where we had the community center incident.  The ‘Nor’ part of Norfair.  It was a nice-ish area.  I’d passed through it a few times.  “And you’re in school?  Are you in the morning or afternoon block?”

“Morning.  I joined the study block for afternoons, I keep good grades so they let me, and I have paperwork from before that says they’re not supposed to give me too much homework, so I don’t have too much to do in the afternoons.”

“They might expect you to check in,” I said.

“They might.”

“Weld and I are in Stratford, so is Ashley,” Sveta said.  “Chris lives somewhere around here.  Tristan is close to here.”

Here being Fairfield.

“Bridgeport span, here,” I said.  “I’m closer to you guys in Stratford than not.”

“Of course I’m the furthest out,” Kenzie said.

“Almost,” Rain said.

“Almost,” Kenzie echoed him.

“Where are you situated?” I asked Rain.

“It’s complicated,” he said.

“Uh huh.  That’s starting to sound like a catchphrase.”

“I hate saying it as much as people hate hearing it.  Locationwise, I’ve always liked saying I’m from everywhere that isn’t anywhere.”

I gave him a look.

“Stop being vague and teasing Victoria,” Sveta said.

“I’m not teasing.  I’m in the middle of nowhere, it’s hard to pin down.  North of Greenwich.  It’s a trip to get here.”

That put Tristan, Byron and Chris close to center, Kenzie out west, Rain out to the far northwest, me a bit to the east, and Sveta and Ashley a bit further to the east.  With the trains I was figuring it might take about four or five hours for Kenzie to get to where Sveta and Ashley were situated.  It would take Rain another couple of hours, depending on how far north he was.

“That’s a pretty significant logistics problem,” I said.  “Even in the best case scenario, if we found a place close to here, that’s a two hour or more trip for people to get here?”

“I could build something,” Kenzie said.  “I can’t make promises.”

“How confident are you?” I asked.

“Kind of confident,” she said, sounding anything but.  “I haven’t done teleportation or breaking movement devices before, but if I made it a series of emplacements and built them big, then if I traveled once a week or so to visit the send-receives and make sure they don’t break down, it might work.”

“Tinker stuff breaks,” I said.

“It does,” Kenzie said.

“It would also be liable to break or break down when you needed it to work the most.  During disasters, or times when there aren’t a lot of downtime.”

“That’s very true,” Kenzie said.

“I’m wondering if there’s even a good way to go about this.  I’m not trying to screw you guys up, I’m genuinely wondering.”

“It might not be as complicated as it seems,” Sveta said.  “I can move quickly if I have to, Ashley doesn’t have much occupying her days, when she doesn’t have her appointments, and I don’t think she minds much.  She’s happy to wake up early and read on the train, she even goes to the New York hub a lot, and that’s a full day trip.  As for you, you can fly again-”

She squeezed my arm as she said it, rocking a bit side to side as she did it.  I rocked a bit with her.

“-and the way you were talking about things, this wouldn’t be a full-time thing for you,” Sveta finished.  Her enthusiasm had risen as she talked, and only dropped with that last part.

“Maybe,” I said.  “It seems you’d want a location that was closer to Kenzie and Chris then.  Closer to Rain.”

“Yeah,” Rain said.  He was looking around a fair bit.  “I don’t mind the trips, either.”

“You okay?” I asked him.

“Yeah.  Forgot for a short while that I have an attempt out on my life.  I really should dwell on it more, to be safe, especially with Kenzie in tow.”

“I can hold my own,” Kenzie said.

“It’s an attempt on my life,” Rain said.  “Lives could be lost.  I don’t want yours to be one of them.  I would feel insanely shitty if you jumped in to help and you got hurt or killed.”

“Insanely?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to call my ride, I think.  See if she can catch me en route instead of me going to her,” Rain said.

“She?  Erin the lady friend?” Kenzie asked.

“Erin the friendship I’m not going to mess with,” Rain said.   He pulled out the phone and stepped a bit away, walking at the road’s edge instead of on the sidewalk.

We reached an intersection, and Rain stepped away, one hand to his ear while he held the phone to the other.  His eyes roved, looking at nearby rooftops and the dark spaces between buildings.

The building at the corner of the intersection was a bar, and a group of ten or so people were standing outside, smoking.  The place and the people smelled like the cheap alcohol that was barely a step above moonshine, that was being sold on the cheap in a lot of places.  Made to fill a need, now a surplus, with cheap, shitty beer available to fill the need instead.

Their attention was on Sveta.

“Hey,” one called out.

She glanced at them, then set to ignoring them.  I took her cue.

“Hey,” the guy called out again, drawing out the word.  “Hey, you with the paint.”

“Whatever you’re going to say, I’ve heard it before,” Sveta said.

“What the fuck’s going on with you, huh?  What’s wrong with you?” he called out.

I turned my head to look at him.  Sveta squeezed my arm, then shook her head a little.

“Hey, you’re weird,” he called out.  “You’re freaky.”

The light changed.  We crossed, Rain trailing a bit behind, still on the phone, periodically responding.  He shot the guys a dark look.

“I don’t like it when people are mean to you,” Kenzie said.

“Thank you for that,” Sveta said.  “And thank you, Victoria.  I know you probably wanted to say something.  I’m glad we didn’t make it into a thing.”

“Does it happen a lot?” I asked.

“Some.  It beats people running away and screaming, and the running and screaming part beat people dying because of me,” Sveta said.  “This is an improvement.  Things will improve more in the future.  I believe that.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Me too.”

“Me too,” Kenzie said.

Sveta put a hand on Kenzie’s hooded head, squeezed my arm.

“My ride’s here,” Rain said, catching up with us, waving at a distant vehicle with its headlights on.  I got a better view of it as it pulled up beside us.  It wasn’t a pretty vehicle – a van with rust around the right headlight.  “We’ve got a good long drive back.  Was good seeing you guys, good to meet you, Victoria.”

“Good to meet you, Rain,” I said.

The driver stuck her hand out, waving.  We moved around to where we could see her through the passenger-side window.

Erin, Rain’s friendship he wasn’t intending to mess with, was not the kind of person I imagined driving a van like that, or spending time with someone of Rain’s somewhat grungy, not-inclined-to-smile presentation.  There were women where someone’s first thought might be ‘they could be a model’ and there were women where the first thought was ‘they have to be a model, it’s not fair if they aren’t’.  She was the latter.  Short black hair with a long swoop at the front, dangly jewelry, more piercings in one ear, and one of the memorial shirts, much like how the dress I was wearing served as a way for me to represent and remember Brockton Bay.  She was from New York, it seemed, or she wanted to represent it.

“Erin, you’ve seen Kenzie and Sveta before.”

“Hi again,” Erin said.

“And this is Victoria.  We were talking about having her be our coach.”

“Hi,” Erin said, leaning toward Rain to get a better view of me, extending her hand in another wave.  Rain looked momentarily like a deer in the headlights with Erin’s face close, with Erin doing a very good job at not noticing or not looking like she’d noticed.  “You look a lot like Glory Girl.”

“I am,” I said.  “I was.”

“Huh,” Erin said.  “That’s really cool.  Maybe I’ll see you around?”

“It’s likely,” I said.

“You guys have a good night.”

“You too,” Kenzie said.  She held up her phone, like she was trying to get a signal.  “Drive safe.”

“We good to go?” Erin asked.

“Yep,” Rain said.  “You want a ride somewhere convenient, Kenz?”

“Sure!”

Kenzie climbed in behind Rain, giving us a wave before the door was closed.

Just Sveta and me left.

We watched as the van pulled away.

“I have a lot of sympathy for Rain,” Sveta said.

“Are you talking about the attempt on his life or the long car trip with the girl he very clearly likes?”

“Oh, yeah, the dangerous thing too,” Sveta said.  “Mostly the long trip.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“But that’s all negative.  We’re going in the same direction, right?  We can catch up?”

“We can definitely catch up.  I want to hear more about that vacation.”

“And you can come over for dinner, right?  Sometime?  You’re not far.  I can’t promise a good dinner, because I’m still trying to find food that Weld can really taste that won’t make the neighbors evacuate their apartments, but there’s takeout!  Or delivery.  I’m sure there’s something we can do.”

“You couldn’t keep me away,” I said.

⊙

Sleep eluded me.  I stood on the balcony, I stared out at a city without nearly enough lights or light in it, a jagged and incomplete skyline, and I tried to shake a persistent melancholy I couldn’t put my finger on.

The day had been a good one.  My friendship with Sveta rekindled, with Sveta doing as well as I could hope for, possibilities for the future, interesting puzzles to work out, and I’d been able to do favors for people I cared about.

A part of it was the therapy.  It was strange, to be in a place mentally and emotionally where therapy had a cost to it, in a way.  The voice of Mrs. Yamada and the tone of the conversations reminded me of the darkest period in my life.  Those reminders were probably responsible for the nightmares that had torn me from sleep.

Maybe it would be good if I called the new therapist, a new voice.

It wasn’t the nightmares that kept me from getting back to sleep, but a restless nagging feeling.  I liked problems I could decisively solve, things I could tell myself I had an answer for, something I could handle in the dawn, and then I could go back to sleep.  The feeling that had settled with me wasn’t that sort of answerable question.

It was the restless nagging that had me carefully and slowly open the sliding door of the balcony, step into the living room, and gather some things.  A bag with my wallet and things, fresher clothes, the mask I’d worn for the broken trigger incident.

I went flying, and my destination wasn’t one that would answer the nagging feeling, but one that could answer other, more concrete questions.  With luck, I’d be able to distract myself.

There were cities and areas I’d considered for the therapy group’s expedition.  Ones in need, ones I knew didn’t fall neatly in one jurisdiction or another.  I used the highways and major roadways as my waypoints, so I wouldn’t pass them or find myself flying too far north or south.

The sun was rising by the time I reached the first.  Sherwood span.  Too low a population, I could tell right away.  Too many farms, the houses too spread out.

It took me twenty minutes to reach the next.  The area was slow to wake up, which was a surprise, given the amount of construction sites I could see from above.  Usually the work started first thing.

It was a nice slice of city, with a view of the water, tall buildings, shiny, modern, with nice, large houses, but it was only halfway erected.    There were cars in driveways, but there wasn’t much life.

I flew low, stopping at one of the gates to a construction site for a taller building.

Laminated sheets had been put up on the gates.

Construction suspended until we’re given what we’re owed.

The same was on display in other places, with laminated sheets of paper and graffiti.  Some of it was angrier.

I was reading a very bold, large bit of text about how certain people should be choking on cocks, when I saw I had company, standing in the corner of my field of view.  A cape.

I turned to face them.

Not anyone I recognized.  A man in armor with spikes on it.  Plate mail, and plate armor was hard to get done right, especially in this modern day.  He carried no weapon I could see.  Spiky plate armor wasn’t exactly original or new, either.

He didn’t say anything or do anything, but he was holding a piece of paper.

I approached him, my forcefield up.  He didn’t budge.

When I was in arm’s reach, he put his gauntlet toward me, paper in hand.  I dropped my forcefield to take it.

“What’s this?”

He wasn’t someone who sounded more intimidating from the inside of a helmet.  His voice was very normal as he said, “We saw you fly in, we discussed, we called some people, this is our message to you.”

“Got it,” I said.  I looked around.  “Quiet town.”

When my head was turned, he reached for my throat.

I put my forcefield up, and I knocked his hand aside, forcefully enough I almost put him on his ass.  The sound rang in my ears.

“Our town,” he said.

That said, he trudged off.

I watched him go, and then I walked in the opposite direction.  People were watching from doorsteps with coffee in hand, or standing by cars, now.

I didn’t want to back down or look weak, not if this was possibly a place I might be visiting with any regularity, so I walked slowly, like I wasn’t bothered.

With all that in mind, I still stopped in my tracks when I read the note.

Turn around and fly home, Glory Hole
-TT

They’d asked around, huh?

I folded the paper up, and I held the folded square as I walked, thinking, observing.  A slice of city, paralyzed, a clear villain presence.

The guy with the spikes might have been Cleat.  A low-tier cape with some background in fighting rings and mercenary work.  Unlike most in fighting rings, he’d never found enough success to get traction in other circles.  Ironically.

I’d left Brockton Bay in the middle of a situation, or I’d been taken from the city during.  I’d put in the hours and put heart and soul into trying to combat the badness that was taking over the city, and at the end of the day, I hadn’t ever enjoyed a resolution to that situation.  I’d never felt like I’d made enough of a difference in the end result.

It was tempting, the idea of coming here to a place like this and somehow completing that journey or using a success here to convince myself I could have made a proper difference if I’d been given a chance.

But this wasn’t about me.  It was about those teenagers and kids in Yamada’s group.

A sign was erected by one construction site.  It was covered in graffiti.  ‘Cedar Point Apartments’ was written at the top, but ‘Cedar’ had been covered over in paint, and ‘Hollow’ had been written in its place.

Cute, and from some cursory investigation, the rebranding had been performed elsewhere, throughout the district.  Graffiti and other signs of anger were clear as day, much of it vile and senseless.

Did I really want to pit those kids against this?  They might give it a shot, and if it was insurmountable, Mrs. Yamada might be happy, and if it was surmountable, everyone would be happy.

I wasn’t sure.

I looked at the graffiti, getting a sense of the atmosphere here.  Vulgarity, vulgarity, obscenity, drawing of vulgarity, hate, anger, vulgarity, possible gang tag, ‘hollow point’ appearing again.

I stopped in front of another piece of graffiti.  It wasn’t crowded in with anything else, so it stood out, almost a piece of art in how it was spelled out on a ruined wall, half-toppled.

THIS IS HOW THINGS ARE NOW

I had the paper in my hand, I had my doubts, but the nagging feeling ceased being nagging and became acutely clear as I looked at the statement.

“Fuck that,” I said.